Taking of pelham 123[Tamil]

Review:

The original "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" (1974) starring Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau is a classic. Tony Scott's remake, "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" (2009) is not.

This remake begins with what has become the obtrusive and defining style of Tony Scott's recent pictures.

Frenetic editing, sudden wipes, stuttering frames, rapid focus-pulls, repetitive zooms and ear piercing sound design to punctuate every moment. This style soon becomes sickening and you wish for a moment a shot would simply hold for more than 3 seconds without constant self-conscious cinematic gimmicks.

This arranged marriage of production effects even made me laugh out loud when during a helicopter shot of the New York skyline, the sun disappears behind some sky scrappers and each time it does you get a "whoosh" sound followed by a train "beeep"!

Soon after this nauseous beginning, a simple edit of Denzel Washington sitting at his desk is badly botched when a mid-shot cuts to a close-up and he is looking and sitting in a completely different position!

On top of these shallow post production and in-camera effects, the core of the original has been dumbed down with a profane and ranting script. The joy of the original ending has gone to be replaced by guns, ranting, salutes and machismo.

Gone is the tension and excitement of the original. Gone is the subtlety of performance. Gone is the humour. In fact everything that made the original great has been wiped clean from this horrendous exercise in style over content.

The wife asks for a gallon of milk (a ridiculous scene) and I am sure you would have a better time trying to drink that gallon of milk in one go than suffer this atrocious attempt at film-making.

Tony Scott is less talented than his brother but still showed promise with his early work. If he continues down this route of brain damaged film-making, I will avoid his pictures as I do those of Michael Bay and Ron Howard.

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