When I woke up in this morning, my plans for the day could pretty much be summed up by work, food, gym, and sleep. When most of us wake up in the morning, the schedules ahead of us are rarely any different from the day that came before or the day that will come after. But as we saw earlier this week, when one man’s plans for the day include taking a gun into the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., they have the potential to completely change the days and lives of many others. And in The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, we see that the same is also true when one man starts his day by hijacking a New York City subway train.
With a runtime under two hours and a twist that is less mind-bending as it just makes the story a bit more interesting, Pelham 1 2 3’s plot is relatively simple. At 2 pm in the afternoon, “Ryder” (John Travolta) and a group of accomplices take over a NYC subway car. After initial logistics are sorted out, Ryder makes a call to the transportation office where train dispatcher Walter Garber (Denzel Washington) suddenly finds himself a reluctant hostage negotiator. As expected, Ryder wants money. And as Garber correctly concludes, if the ten million dollar ransom isn’t delivered by deadline, hostages will be killed.
But while Pelham 1 2 3 pretty much unfolds as you would expect, with too much stalling at the beginning, too little time at the end, and deaths at all the proper intervals, what makes Pelham 1 2 3 different than just your average ticking-time-bomb action flick are the two men at its center. While Ryder’s response to Garber’s question, “So, this is just about money?” is “Is there anything else?,” his conversations with Garber reflect a man whose thoughts involve a bit more than just cash. While Garber may be “just a civil service employee,” he also has a few skeletons in his own closet. And while Garber and Ryder may technically be enemies, as Ryder tells Garber, “You may be the last friend I ever make.”
As even the untrained Garber pulls out of Ryder in their initial exchanges, Ryder is a man who knows money, a man who believes in God, and a man who does not appear to fear death. As Ryder tells the conductor when he first takes over the train, “God put you on this earth for one thing and one thing only.” As he tells Garber when Garber tries to delve into his motivation, “We all owe God a debt, and I’m a man who pays his debts.” And as Ryder says when Garber points out that a “good Catholic” really shouldn’t be in the business of killing innocent people, “A good Catholic knows that nobody is innocent.” Even when Garber tries to get him to consider the value of his own life, as Ryder sees it, in the end, “we all owe God a death.”
But not just a man who believes in God, Ryder is also a man who believes in logic. From the moment he takes over the train, his plans and actions are methodical and calculated. Negotiating the price to be paid for his hostages, he categorizes them as commodities. When he presents his ransom request, he gives it to Garber via figures and formulas. When anyone even dares challenge his orders or requests, to Garber, it is as if they have chosen to ignore the laws of gravity. And not surprisingly, that way of thinking also influences his concept of God.
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