Not Really Taking "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three"

Hihi,

One of the ways I'm clearly coping with/utilizing the ever-shortening time before Second Child is born is by writing.  I've been really glad to be able to dedicate some time to this every day for the last few days.  It's satisfying to start the year not only with several movies watched, but also with several entries written.  As my due date grows very near, it's possible that this is the last entry I'll be able to write before my new Child arrives, but of course at this point nothing is certain; if I can write more, great, if I don't obviously that's fine as well--I'll do my best to find time here and there to write once they're here.

I've watched a couple of movies throughout my pregnancy (including, for example, re-watched Martin Scorsese's "GoodFellas" (1990)) that have prompted my Husband to declare that I am experiencing what he terms "pregnancy bloodlust".  I have no explanation for this trend, although I'm sure Freud would have a squeamish-cluelessness-about-women-induced field day with it.  In any case, the most recent movie I watched to fit this pattern is "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" (1974).

I chose "Pelham" because I was in the mood for a heist movie, which is a genre I've come to enjoy more especially since "Logan Lucky" (2017) and "Hell or High Water" (2016) demonstrated just how good these films can be.  In addition, I was guided to this film by: 

• this list of the best heist movies, which listed the movie as #1,
• my occasionally resurgent film student-y instincts to watch the "classics" (and by "film student" I mean "I took like 3 film classes in undergrad"), and 
• its setting in assuredly classically gritty 1970s New York City (and my itch to chase, for example, "Dog Day Afternoon" (1974)).

With those criteria satisfied, this film seemed like a great option.

And here's the thing: Somewhat paradoxically, I've glad I watched this movie because it generally satisfied the rationale I just stated, and I also didn't think it was all that great.

Firstly, perhaps surprisingly, I didn't feel myself drawn into the potential thrill of the claustrophobic set-up of a bunch of innocent bystanders held captive by a coordinated team of thieves in the belly of New York's subway.  This might have been enhanced if the film had spent more time rounding out the characters trapped in the subway car while the clock ticked away on the thieves' ultimatum to the city to pay up or face their bloody consequences; instead, unfortunately, the captives were reduced to a variety of tropes likely meant to satisfy a contemporary audience's assumptions about the riffraff and non-English speakers who occupied New York City.

And that of course brings me to my second complaint: I know that I'm likely signing up for this when I watch a movie from this era, but I still feel affronted, annoyed, and puzzled by how compulsively so many movies from the '70s flesh out their dialogue with needless racism, homophobia, and sexism.  It is so grating, and on so many levels it pisses me off.  It pisses me off that casually expressing those kinds of attitudes in film was so acceptable and commonplace, that filmmakers were fine with only making movies for other straight white men and alienating and oppressing anybody else (and that the filmmaking industry was almost exclusively populated only by straight white men during this era and so much of the industry's history), and that screenwriters and everyone else involved in making movies during this period couldn't figure out another way to tell stories and add "color" to their scripts than relying on idle racist, homophobic, and sexist chatter often propped up by lazy stereotypes of the groups their language oppressed.

This pattern was persistent enough through "Pelham" that it watching it felt more akin to the much less satisfying for similar reasons "The French Connection" (1971) than 1974's "Dog Day Afternoon".  "The French Connection" sticks to rote centering of straight white dudes whose talk is peppered with the same kinds of oppressive talk as "Pelham" as it trails Gene Hackman's Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle's pursuit of heroin smugglers (although to be fair it does include that wild car chase).  Alternatively, "Dog Day Afternoon" tells the story of a heist conducted so one of the men involved can pay for gender affirming surgery for his partner, and is electrified by Al Pacino's intense and frenetic star performance as Sonny Wortzik.  The existence of this latter film proves that it was possible to make a somewhat more inclusive and therefore interesting heist movie in 1970s New York... not to mention that it is completely unsurprising that I apparently find it way more interesting when heist movies focus on the thieves and not law enforcement.

With all this taken into consideration, in rating this movie I balanced these considerations against the particular satisfaction I take in at least watching another film that further deepens my understanding of the history of American cinema, and especially a movie that gives me the opportunity to spend some time in a city I love even if it's not cast in a particularly flattering light.  I gave "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" a 3.

{Heart}