Remakes are held to such more scrutiny than original films. There are a lot of different views on remakes, re-boots, re-imaginings or whatever the hell you want to call them. If a it's a re-imagining of a successful film, then it damn well better do the original justice. If it's a reboot of a franchise then it has to be the complete opposite of what the original was attempting to do. And even if it's a remake of a film that isn't necessarily held to extremely high esteem, it's highly subject to default skepticism. Such is the case with The Taking of Pellham 123.

Now I have to admit, that I have not seen the original yet (it's in my ever growing Netflix queue), but I don't think that a remake of the 1974 film of the same name warrants any automatic backlash. First of all, I dare anybody to call any of the characters in the original film iconic or put the film in a Top 100 list. It's not happening. Personally, since the film is also an adaptation of a book by Morton Freedgood, it should be looked at just the same. How many different adaptations of the Lord of the Rings trilogy or the Chronicles of Narnia series have been made. That's an extreme example, but no one gets pissed about those. People have said that this is a remake that doesn't need to be made. It's not like they're remaking The Godfather.

Personally, I think the Tony Scott directed film looks like a great return of John Travolta to the action genre and pinning him up against the formidable force that is Denzel Washington. The trailer doesn't give too much away in the vein of plot other than that Travolta and a team of terrorists are holding the Pellham 123 train hostage for ransom, and Denzel, as the subway dispatcher and Trainsit Authority lieutenant has to negotiate. The intersting element that comes into play is where are these hostage takers going to go once they get their money (they're trapped in the subway tunnel system with nowhere to run). Trailer is embedded below for your thoughts.