Few settings in motion pictures are extra interesting than a prepare. As a result of they’re such peculiar modes of transportation, seeing them upended into a spot of hazard and pressure is sort of all the time invigorating. Nowhere is that extra evident than within the New York Metropolis subway system that serves thousands and thousands of individuals each single day. Each time one thing tragic occurs on considered one of their trains, it makes nationwide information due to how far-reaching and necessary that system is. “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” weaponizes this disruption of the peculiar in all probability higher than any different prepare movie.

A part of what makes it so efficient is the accuracy of its setting. You would get on a 6 prepare at present and take the identical path because the prepare that will get hijacked within the movie, from the 59th Avenue station right down to the twenty third Avenue one. So many motion pictures which can be inextricably tied to the cities they’re set in nonetheless take an incredible quantity of shortcuts in geography, favoring the thought of the place they happen over actuality. “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” understands that the fact of New York Metropolis is much extra dynamic than a model of the town you would think about. It cuts away any barrier to entry or shred of artifice.

For a high-concept movie like this, having that lack of a barrier is essential to make the viewers buy-in as instantly as humanly attainable. All you need is to place them in the course of the stress and maintain them there till you may stretch that elastic band so far as it might probably go. There isn’t any higher manner to do this than have or not it’s as actual as attainable.