John Travolta’s never been one to miss irony. Over his long, illustrious and not so illustrious career, he’s done a lot of memorable things, but perhaps none so memorable as this little monologue that kicked off the 2001 action movie Swordfish: “You know what the problem with Hollywood is? They make $#!t. Unbelievable, unremarkable $#!t. Now I'm not some grungy wannabe filmmaker that's searching for existentialism through a haze of bong smoke or something. No, it's easy to pick apart bad acting, short-sighted directing, and a purely moronic stringing together of words that many of the studios term as ‘prose.’ No, I'm talking about the lack of realism.”

Well, who better to get a lesson in realism from than the guy that spearheaded Battlefield Earth, especially in a movie like Swordfish which strained even the most open sense of suspension of disbelief? But Swordfish is one example of many of Travolta’s famous “misses.” No body in Hollywood has a batting average like Travolta, from choices of audacious brilliance (Pulp Fiction, Primary Colours and Face/Off) to astounding stupidity (Look Who’s Talking, Look Who’s Talking Too, Look Who’s Talking Now). Well Travolta actually comes out pretty good in The Taking of Pelham 123, a remake of the 1974 film of the same name. The film itself is rather well done, at least two-thirds so.

That vast majority of the film that works is built on a great cat-and-mouse verbal sparring match between Travolta’s subway hostage-taking Ryder and Denzel Washington’s accidental hostage negotiator Walter Garber. What’s weird is that as soon as the two come face-to-face is when the movie starts to break the tension and strain reality. Everything leading up to that is golden though. There’s great tension, consequences, a couple of compelling mysteries and a story behind the story. This is not like the trailer with car crashes and explosions, though there are some. This is about character and drama… for the first hour and ten minutes at least anyway.

And it unfolds in real time too, more or less, and everybody loves real time. I’d almost say that you half expect Jack Bauer to bust in and take command, but Tony Scott’s break-neck pacing keeps things at a fever pitch. At the centre of the film is Ryder, who’s smooth operation in taking nearly 20 people hostage for $10 million on a single subway car, comes down to Garber, who’s doing dispatch duty while being investigated for taking bribes. The hostage negotiator (John Turturro) thinks Garber might be sketchy, but when he tries to take control of the situation he makes Ryder angry, and you won’t like him when he’s angry. With a ticking time clock for delivery of the $10 million, Garber finds himself with the lives of over a dozen people in his untrained hands.

Scott keeps the action tight, and doesn’t allow the viewer much room for comfort or opportunity to use the whole seat. The plot goes from little crisis to little crisis, and I have to admit that for a while there I wasn’t sure how it was all going to work itself out. Played out against the hustle and bustle of New York rush hour, there’s something that feels even more genuine. Anchored by the compelling back and forth between Washington and Travolta, The Taking of Pelham 123 is a compelling mix of dramatics and suspense. But like I said, that only lasts so long as the film’s climax when contrivances become clichéd and the old action movie checklist is brought out and engaged to produce pedantic results.

But even given that fact that movie ends rather formulaically, I found myself still digging the vibe and the action right up till the final confrontation. By the time you get to the end, you’re so invested in the characters anyway that the fact there isn’t much making sense is a rather secondary consideration. As far as action movies go, The Taking of Pelham 123 is an offering of both style and substance; technically well done and surprisingly well written. And that’s all the realism you need.