The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott, 2009)

Well, another pointless remake of a reasonable Golden Age of Hollywood heist film with Tony Scott, a hack of medium standing who somehow always commands a hefty budget despite a singular failure to ever deliver anything memorable with it, unless you count the pace-setting homoerotics of Top Gun. Add the dead certs that Travolta will ham it up something rotten as the villain and Washington will provide the compromised but surprisingly tough everyman angle. Expectations duly lowered by this combination,  the efficiency of the dialogue and set-up in the first half hour come as a pleasant surprise. Then Scott realises at the same time that there's not much more dialogue to be had between his two principals, and there's still half an hour until the train hijackers' deadline to fill up somehow, and that his goldfish audience might be drowsing without screeching cop cars or machine guns, so it's time for some wholly gratuitous crashes in scenes quite redundant to the actual drama at hand. We just about make it to the end before the cliche and plothole count has gone through the roof, but it's a close-run thing.

4/10