thomas4cinema

A gang of … em, yes, gangsters kidnaps a subway car and threatens to kill the hostages unless 10 Million Dollars are being coughed up by the city of New York.
It was never more simple to summarise a movie, because it is not just simple, it is outright primitive in its premise. That is not necessarily bad, but here it is. There is nothing beyond that basic starting point, there is no single surprise, no plot twist, not hidden meaning (beyond the additional line of income lead gangster John Travolta expects through the stock exchange decline following the new “subway terror attacks”). Of course Denzel Washington as dispatcher is very watchable as ever, also Travolta as bad guy and John Turturro as lead agent, but every single scene looks as if it would have been done like that 35 years ago, when big-scale blockbusters were satisfied when they managed to avoid microphones in the frame and if all stuntmen survived. There is no subtlety, no originality. The only thing slightly original is the title sequence, which again is completely detached in style from the rest of the movie (and looks like a Google Earth advertisement). And Gandolfini as the completely fed up New York mayor is amusing at times. The runaway subway just stops when crossing the stop signal? What?? The gangster just gets shot when facing his adversary? WTF?!? This is really uninspired. And Walter Matthau keeps rotating in his grave…