June 13, 2009
Faith Film Review:The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
Catholic Movie Review.org: Brisk but gritty thriller that pits a New York subway dispatcher (Denzel Washington) against a psychopath (John Travolta) whose small gang (including Luis Guzman) has hijacked the titular train, taking its passengers hostage. Performances by the leads and supporting cast—James Gandolfini as the mayor and John Turturro as a police negotiator among them—are assured, but director Tony Scott’s adaptation of John Godey’s bestseller, previously filmed in 1974, treats its villain’s Catholic upbringing ambiguously and has interludes of gory violence and relentlessly coarse language throughout. Brief but intense violence, pervasive rough and crude language, occasional use of profanity. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is L—limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling.
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June 13, 2009
One time watch film, nothing too fascinating.
I saw the show last night and was disappointed. John Travolta’s character comes across on the one hand as insanely homocidal and on the other as planning the entire affair simply for money. Both Denzel Washington and Travolta do their acting thing, and they are both masters at their trade, but in the end you don’t walk away saying this was a really good movie. You just kind of don’t know what to think.
As for the swearing, it is a more pervasive than the review suggests. There are plenty of F bombs throughout. I guess these Scientology folks (Travolta) do not have a problem with extremely coarse language.