
John Travolta stars in The Taking of Pelham 123 .
Without even trying, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 , the new thriller starring John Travolta as a criminal who hijacks a Manhattan subway train and Denzel Washington as the transit employee who tries to stop him, is a tale of two cities: New York in 1974 and New York today.
In the American imagination, the New York City of the 1970s was a domestic war zone: Vietnam brought home. The murder rate had soared, the wrong kinds of drugs were available on any corner, and the whole place was filthy; Harry...