影片简介

纽约市地下铁行车调度员华特（丹佐华盛顿饰）有著极其平凡普通的生活，每天的生活就是去地铁站上班、工作、然後回家，然而一起犯罪案子的发生，彻底的改变了华特原本平静无波的生活：地铁遭劫。以雷德（约翰屈伏塔饰）为首的四个歹徒，抱著极大的犯罪野心，决定洗劫人潮汹涌、构造复杂的纽约地铁站。这群胆大计高的歹徒在洗劫了纽约地下铁之後，又劫持18名乘客作为人质，并扬言每分钟处决一名乘客，威胁市政府在一小时内交100万美元赎人。
　　在千钧一发之际，华特对於地铁站的专业与了解，使他被派上前线与歹徒斗智，展开一场惊心动魄的救援行动，然而他们最大的问题出现了：就算歹徒顺利拿到赎金，人质们该用何种方式进行逃离现场呢？

Walter Garber is a traffic manager in the control center for MTA, the vast New York City Subway underground rail system. On an ordinary day he may have to deal with trains that break down, derailments, stuck signals and the like.

But when one of his trains stops in mid-tunnel for no apparent reason he quickly finds out this is no ordinary day.

A train hijacked at gunpoint with hostages' lives at stake puts Garber in the 'hot seat' because the mastermind of the plot - who calls himself 'Ryder' - will only talk to the dispatcher as he details his demands punctuated with threats of deadly violence.

Director Tony Scott says his challenge was to keep the audience in suspense and keep the movie moving forward as the two adversaries spend much of the time talking back and forth on the radio.

"For me it's a tough movie to do," Scott says. "Two-thirds of the movie is two guys on the phone so I saw that as being a challenge，cos’ I thought, how did we keep this anxiety and momentum going because it’s, as I say, two-thirds of the movie it's two guys on the phone with each other."

As he did in hit movies like Top Gun and Crimson Tide, Scott relies on reality rather than digital effects, in this case putting his actors in real New York subway cars and along the tracks in the real tunnels.

"The city was the third character in the movie and became a very important factor," says Scott. "That's why I opened the movie with that freneticism and that anxiety which I stole from "Koyaanisqatsi," which was a big, old 'stoner' movie from the '70's - the same time they brought out [the original]"…Pelham." I wanted to make the city a very strong character and I think I handled and shot it in a way that it hasn't been before. It's always about noise and people and anxiety, so it was a great contrast. For me this movie was a brilliant canvas in terms of the bowels of the city of New York down in the subway system to the calmness and the quiet of the almost NASA-like MTA control center. So I had a great canvas on which to work. "

"I just liked the idea that he was an ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation," adds Denzel Washington.

…Pelham 1-2-3 is co-star Washington's fourth film with director Scott; and for this one Washington says his big challenge was not to be a police officer or a leader, but just to be an ordinary civil servant.

"The challenge is that there was nothing special about the guy," Washington says. "He's a regular, hard-working 'Joe', you know, and I embraced that. So he doesn't know anything about guns. He’s not, suddenly, you know, all we find out that he was in 'Delta Force' as a kid. He's just a guy, overweight, coffee-spilling klutz who saves the day."

The original film starred Walter Matthau as Garber and Robert Shaw was the subway hijacker, the character John Travolta plays in the new film. However Washington says what they did is not based on that 1974 thriller.

"I don't think it's a remake," Washington says. "I think it's basically a story of a hostage situation on a train in New York City. I think that's what the two films have in common and I don't know that my character and the character that Walter Matthau played are that similar."

The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 also features John Turturro as the New York police department's skilled hostage negotiator. James Gandolfini plays the city's scandal-plagued mayor and Luiz Guzman is one of Travolta's key henchmen in the hijacking. The screenplay, adapted from the novel by John Godey, is by Brian Helgeland.