Travolta boards 'Pelham' remake
John Travolta is boarding "The Taking of Pelham 123," negotiating to join Denzel Washington in the Tony Scott-directed remake at Columbia.
Travolta will play the leader of a quartet that hijacks a Gotham subway train and threatens to kill the passengers unless a ransom is paid. The role was originated in the 1974 film by Robert Shaw. Washington plays the chief detective of security for the subway, a role originated by Walter Matthau in the Joseph Sargent-directed drama. . . .
Variety, October 25

Gandolfini plays mayor in 'Pelham'
James Gandolfini will go from Jersey don to Gotham mayor. . . . Gandolfini will plays a pol under incredible pressure to end a crisis when a packed subway car is ransomed by a criminal (Travolta) and his gang. . . .
Variety, March 23

This is a film I watched at least once on channel 5, WTTG, growing up in Northern Virginia. It would occasionally come on Saturday afternoons -- one of the Saturday movies that aired, in blocks, on our local independent stations (5, now a FOX station, was a Metromedia affiliate, and channel 20, which is a CW affiliate now also owned by FOX thanks to some station swapping, I think, was a UHF station that, like 5, ran reruns of TV shows and lots of movies). I still remember the ending of this film, and that it held a certain power over me. This one and some movie called "Winter Kills" stand out as particularly vivid amid all the other horrible prints of bad movies that I saw, usually in snippets, growing up.

Funny to learn now that that original Pelham is considered some sort of classic. I'm looking forward to the remake, but think I ought to revisit the original before the new version comes out.

Years before I saw the film, a friend got me hooked on the opening-credits music, which was featured in a sampler of cool soundtrack tunes, many of them with a '60s or '70s vibe.

Very cool. I haven't seen the film, but it's on my Netflix queue. As a kid I read the John Godey novel numerous times (or at least the Reader's Digest version, which my parents left sitting around the house for years). It's an interesting book in that it deliberately changes point of view from character to character; each section begins with a particular character's name in a subhead. Many novelists use multiple points of view, of course, but few of them bother to alert the reader to the device.

I had just seen this movie for the first time, just a few months ago, when it premiered on Turner Classic Movies. What I most appreciated about the film is how it brought me back to when I was a youngster, growing up in Manhattan... the original reeks of authenticity as to what New York City life was like in the 70s, before Giuliani ultimately cleaned things up, even tho, the actual hijacking story and the wise-cracking Matthau character, and the anti-climax are from the purely Hollywood screenwriting factory. (Of course, The Warriors did this one better).

Can a remake do this justice? Somehow, the remake will appear to have Die-Hard/Speed written all over it, and I fear this will weaken the material.

I changed the title of this topic to the '123' format published in IMDb, plus I added the year to distinguish it from the original.