The Taking of Pelham 123 ( 2009 ) is Tony Scott continuing to mess with Michael Bay

  Blender Dumbass
October 21, 2025

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Tony Scott's 2009 film The Taking of Pelham 123 is a remake of a 1998 TV movie with same name, which is a remake of a 1974 movie with the same name, which is an adaptation of a 1973 book, with the same name. Strangely enough, apart from Denzel Washington playing the hero and John Travolta playing the villain, the film also prominently shows John Turturro and Ramón Rodríguez which, the same year, also appeared in a Michael Bay film Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.

As I observed in my review of Domino 2005 Tony Scott and Michael Bay had something like a friendly rivalry between each other, measuring who's Bayhem! is the biggest. It would not be too out of the question that casting of Turturro and Rodríguez were not accidental. And then next film by Scott Unstoppable was not accidental either.

Yes, technically speaking, the production of Transformers 2 started a few months after the production of The Taking of Pelham 123. Which means that Ramón Rodríguez was probably cast by Michael Bay to mess with Tony Scott. But John Turturro was already a big part of the first Transformers movie from 2007. And in this movie he also plays a slightly ridiculous suited government agent kind a guy. You can practically smell the vibe of Agent Simmons in this guy.

The film is about a group of "terrorists" ( or not, because the movie is unsure what to call them ) that take a subway train hostage. They want $10 million in cash, in one hour, or they will start executing the hostages. The main terrorist is played by John Travolta. And the guy who is talking to him to negotiate, at the subway control station is played by Denzel Washington.

The interesting thing about Travolta is that the actor had multiple falling outs. He was immensely cool ( mostly from Brian De Palma movies ) in in the late 70s and early 80s. Then by the 90s he started making very uninteresting movies, until Quentin Tarantino cast him in Pulp Fiction putting him back on the map, of being one of the coolest assess in Hollywood. And then it happened again. Travolta started making crap by about 2000s and Tony Scott had to resurrect Travolta this time around.

It is known that Tarantino worked with Tony Scott multiple times. First time in 1993 for True Romance, which Tarantino wrote and Scott directed. It was written originally to be Tarantino's first picture, but studios thought it was too expensive, or something, for an unknown, to direct. So he sold it instead and wrote Reservoir Dogs, which he directed a year earlier than True Romance.

Here is a thing, Reservoir Dogs takes an idea from the original 1974 The Taking of Pelham 123. The idea of the bad guys having code names. You know, Mr. Blue, Mr. Pink, Mr. Brown and stuff... Technically speaking Travolta is playing here the Mr. Blue character from the original material. Just I think, Tony, knowing Quentin very well, decided not to have this color-code thing. Maybe he was avoiding a reference-recursion or something. In this movie Mr. Blue is just "Ryder". The funny thing is that Travolta in Pulp Fiction is playing Vincent Vega. Canonically a brother of Vic Vega ( or Mr. Blonde ) from Reservoir Dogs. And even more interesting, is that originally Vic and Vincent Vega were supposed to be the same character, both played by Michael Madsen. But Michael decided that he didn't want to do Vic again ( he didn't know yet how much of a big deal Tarantino and Pulp Fiction will end up being ). So Tarantino rewrote the part a bit to be his brother instead, even thinking that he might write a movie about the Vega Brothers some time in the future. Too bad Vincent dies in Pulp Fiction and Travolta isn't getting any younger. And Michael Madsen ( the actor ) is also dead already. So we never gonna get the Vega Brothers movie. But we did get Travolta playing Mr. Blue... Kind of.

Also interesting is that right after this movie, almost immediately, Tony Scott made Unstoppable about a train that gone rogue. He obviously reused Denzel Washington. I mean, what is a Tony Scott movie without Denzel Washington? But he also used Chris Pine as a co-lead.

First of all, it could be theorized that Tony made Pelham 123 as a kind of retaliation for Transformers. Hence John Turturro is in literally the same role. But Unstoppable could be a retaliation for Revenge of the Fallen. Michael Bay makes two movies with the same concept one after another. The concept being large robots that can transform into cars. So Tony needs to do two movies with the same concept as well. His concept is trains. In both films there is something to do with trains. And here is the thing, Tony casts Kevin Dunn into the the second trains movie. The same Kevin Dunn that plays Sam's father in Transformers films.

But that is not all. You can notice a slight change in the way Tony handles the filming of Unstoppable. Pelham 123 is classic bad shit crazy Tony-Scott-hem!. But in Unstoppable he is adding energy. He is moving the camera more. There are more dynamic camera shots. As if he isn't even trying to compete much with Bay. No... the camera shots are more complex than Bay shots. They are kind of start to creep on the style of Spielberg. But not quite Spielberg... something in between Spielberg and Bay...

The same year as The Taking of Pelham 123 and Revenge of the Fallen another rather big movie also comes out. And that movie is J. J. Abram's Star Trek. And I argue in my review of the film that J. J. Abram's style is like mixing Michael Bay with Steven Spielberg. And who is the lead actor of Star Trek. That's right... Chris Pine! The same Chris Pine that ends up in Unstoppable one year later.

No wander John Travolta's character, spoiler alert, suddenly decides, out of nowhere, to kill himself. He does it on a bridge as well... I bet Tony could no longer fight off all of his imitator directors.

Happy Hacking!!!


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  Troler c:0



Kenneth Branagh's "Hamlet" (1996) is an adaptation of Shakespeare's play by the same name, which is an adaptation of a historical tale of Hamlet, which is an artistic depiction of the actual life of Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark.

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  Troler c:1



Travolta is a sine wave, he started out as a nobody, rose to prominence then fell... then rose... then fell... then rose again until... he became 71 years old.

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  Troler c:2



That hit like a truck.

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