S4E45: The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)

**November Kelly** (0:18)
Hello and welcome to another episode of Kill James Bond. I am November Kelly. I am joined, as always, by my friends Abigail Thorn and Devon.

**Abigail Thorn** (0:25)
Hello!

**Devon** (0:26)
Cowabunga! How are we doing, everyone?

**November Kelly** (0:28)
Ah, feeling like New York City is a character in a movie again is how I'm feeling.

**Devon** (0:34)
I'm feeling amazing. You know, you can get to Laundry Zero so easily in the climate apocalypse. It's not rained all summer. No, it's true. I'm fucking right there.

**November Kelly** (0:43)
It's great. So long as you don't think. So long as you just manage to not think about it ever, then it's fine. It's not. That's how I'm coping.

**Devon** (0:53)
Smell the plants dying around us. Well, in between smelling the wildfire smoke from the valleys that we got covered, bleaketed in yesterday. Oh, it's going great.

**November Kelly** (1:04)
It's not going wonderfully. I mean, my partner just sent me a load of their photos that they took, their film photos. And one of them is of a little concrete, sort of engraving in the ground that says, every blade of grass is worth its weight in gold. And then the grass that should be next to that is completely dead. And it looks like a kind of like a sunburned Dorito. And so I think maybe...

**Devon** (1:30)
That's amazing.

**November Kelly** (1:31)
things in the year of our Lord 2026 are not going so well, but we can always find refuge in movies.

**Devon** (1:38)
I wake up this morning and I look to my wife and I say, I've got to watch the taking of Pelham 123 And she goes, again?

**November Kelly** (1:46)
It will never end. I'm like, yes! We will never be free of it.
After this one dies and we have to re-record this episode, we'll then go to the 1998 TV movie. And then we're going to have to take two attempts at that.

**Devon** (1:58)
Healthy.

**November Kelly** (1:59)
Mm-hmm.

**Devon** (2:00)
We're stuck in the Pelham dimension.

**November Kelly** (2:02)
I wasn't expecting it, but we are the hostages here.

**Abigail Thorn** (2:04)
Oh.

**November Kelly** (2:05)
You're right.

**Devon** (2:06)
And our hostage taker is much more bombastic this time.

**Abigail Thorn** (2:09)
So, we're watching the 2009 remake of the Taking a Pelham 123 I realized about five minutes into this that I thought I'd seen this before, but I think I've actually seen a different Denzel Washington train crash movie. I've not seen this.

**November Kelly** (2:21)
Oh, you've seen it?

**Abigail Thorn** (2:22)
I was excited.

**November Kelly** (2:23)
I have no idea what it is.

**Abigail Thorn** (2:25)
Don't waste the listener's time by trying to remember it, because it's annoying to listen to people do that on podcasts.

**Devon** (2:30)
Let's both just try to remember Denzel.

**November Kelly** (2:33)
That's fine.
Denzel Washington will be playing sort of guilt-ridden redemption-seeking heroes on an unexpected mode of transport. Plane, train, automobile, you name it. But so, yeah, this is the 2009, and it is a really 2009 feeling movie.

**Abigail Thorn** (2:53)
Oh, it is.

**Devon** (2:53)
Oh, yeah.

**Abigail Thorn** (2:54)
On take, I like it better than the original.

**November Kelly** (2:57)
That's interesting to me. I think it's better.

**Devon** (2:59)
Strong statement. I don't like it more.

**Abigail Thorn** (3:01)
Listeners, I think if you can get past the 2000s editing, which is a big ask, but if you can get past it, I think this is a film worth watching. I'd say check it out.

**November Kelly** (3:08)
I think I enjoyed it. I think it's fun. I think the original is better, but I did like it. I like Tony Scott. We'll talk about some other stuff that he's done. But as you say, the editing, I mean, this movie begins with a sort of picture in picture of the Columbia video, and then it spreads out on the screen. And obviously I flee because the movie's coming right at us. You know, like that one train. The Denzel Washington was driving.

**Devon** (3:33)
I had a good time with this one. To put my hat in the ring, I had a good time with this. I don't think it's better than the original, but I did have a good... It's like a mid Die Hard. It's like two or three. It's like, I'm having a good time here.

**November Kelly** (3:45)
This is like, if they made a Die Hard movie every year, this would have been like Die Hard 7 And that's fine.
I would have sort of like gone to see it. I would have had a good time.