The Taking of Pelham 123 - To the swingers and the roustabouts and the carnivore queen

I never thought that the words 'Underwhelmed' and 'Tony Scott' could go together. But it appears that they can. He is one of my favourite directors with movies such as 'Enemy of the State', 'Spy Game', 'Last Boy Scout' and 'Man on Fire' to name a few. Yeah he's a stylised director with his trademark blind light and his ever increasing MTV hyperkinetic editing. But his films are good. It seems though that with this remake he has ran out of steam.

It contains all of his said TM's, but it all comes across as more of the same. It isn't helped by everyone else seemingly going through the motions as well. Washington's perfect teeth everyday joe churning out the same old stuff. Travolta's camp bad guy that we've seen far too many times before and were never really scared of in the first place (although never with such unbelievable make-up, and that includes Battlefield Earth). And there's more New Yawking than you saw in Die Hard with a Vengeance.

So there you have it. A superb high octane thriller for those of you that have never seen any similar work from these three power hitters before. They should be less proud of themselves though as it appears they were just fulfilling contract obligations.