In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

When the director is Tony Scott, you strap in ready to go for a ride. Sadly this film is limited in scope, and doesn't go anywhere worthwhile. Enemy of the State was a great Tony Scott film. Pelham 123 is a thousand times worse. The premise is too simple. There's nothing clever about any of the characters. No plot twists, nothing to think about, and no satisfaction by the end. The bad guy played by Travolta, tries hard to give purpose to his murderous psycho plot, but it doesn't work. The writers struggle to bring anything worthwhile to the screenplay or dialog. No doubt the original book this is based on, is nothing special. The visuals try to make up for the void in the plot, with constant irritating jump cuts and over-saturated "video" effects. This stylistic treatment is overdone. Tony Scott has always used some degree of visual decoration, but this takes it too far. It starts okay, but by the time we reach the halfway point, things have descended into mediocrity and never recover. Just like with Pay Back, the studio should have intervened and re-wrote the second half, saving it from the train wreck which is Pelham 123.

In my college art class on the first day the professor asked what is art. I replied: The Ikea commercial. Anything that is unboring. She laughed.And I said, art makes you want to roll the images in your mind's eye again and again. Anything that makes you want to come back.Well a good testament of a movie is if it makes you want to rewatch. And it did. I love the tension, the self-righteous philosophical tension. In fact, I rewatched Law Abiding Citizen and was craving something similar. Google AI is not intelligent enough to suggest it from similar pattern and themes.People may frown at my high rating. But it held my attention even after a rewatch and that's what it really matters. I will probably hit Phonebooth next for another rewatch keeping up with the similar style.

Spoiler alert! I am a huge fan of the original and was curious about the remake. Well, the movie was OK. Suspenseful and intense but one thing that I noticed was that seemed to be a mistake was that Walter's wife asked him to bring home a "Gallon" of Milk but in the final scene it shows him carrying a bag with a "Half-Gallon" of Milk. Not a big deal but did anyone else notice that? Am I wrong?

I was looking forward to this movie for a very long time now and I must say that it was a bit disappointing. The story line is very predictable. One could tell from the beginning that Walter Garber will be the big great hero at the end of the movie. Ryder's character starts to develop in the beginning in the right direction and makes you curious about his reasons for doing what he was doing. It leaves the impression that maybe something personal and emotional, a wrong doing or an injustice has led him to respond in this wrong way. But, in the end the character development takes a complete disappointing turn. Ryder was doing all this because of money. So, overall the very end of the movie can be anticipated. Even the fact that Ryder's plan A will fail and a plan B is needed, is also what one would expect from movies like this. In terms of the message that the movie was trying to convey, I must say that all it got to me was that in the end the bad boys always lose.