It appears that Tony Scott and Denzel Washington really rather enjoy each other’s company, as this is their fourth film together (Crimson Tide, Man on Fire, Déjà Vu), with a possible fifth (Unstoppable) on the way. The bad news is, for Washington at least, that he hardly does his best work under Scott. And although he’s the finest thing in this shoddy semi-remake of the 1974 classic, that’s not saying much.

Family man Walter Garber (Washington) is a dispatcher for the New York subway system. In his control room he oversees the movements of all the trains on the system. Alarm bells begin to ring however when train Pelham 123 stops in its tracks – literally. On board are a bunch of gun-toting loons, led by a figure known as Ryder (John Travolta), who have taken the front part of the train and its passengers hostage.

A dialogue opens between Garber and Travolta; it’s not only here that we’re made aware of the baddie’s demands, but also the growing relationship between the pair. And it’s this banter that is at the heart of the film. Sadly, Scott has to fill the spaces between with whizzy cut scenes and bland exterior shots of cars zooming around downtown NY at silly speeds. They’re certainly nothing special and almost feel like that they’re actually from another film entirely.

So that's two Royales with cheese, one shake and one pie. Do you want fries with that?

To Scott’s credit, he’s not afraid to get a predominantly male cast together and let them get on with it. It’s a solid, talented group too, with James Gandolfini, John Turturro and Luis Guzmán adding their considerable thespian weight to the film. Unfortunately, neither the story nor dialogue gives them much time to impress.And although Travolta’s turn as Vincent Vega in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction has led to him to play more villainous roles, none of them, including this character, have been all that convincing. Yes, technically dressing up in all black and having a tattoo can be seen as prerequisite for baddie-dom, but sometimes you need to put a bit more work into it than that.

And Washington? Well, as one of the greatest actors of his generation, it certainly won’t go down as one of his most memorable performances. He does have the ability to be watchable even in the most dire kind of dross; but an actor of his calibre shouldn’t be relegated to these types of roles on such a regular basis – he is infinitely so much better than that.

Scott himself makes one fateful error towards the end of the film, when he lets Garber get out of his chair and leave the building. All the good work he had subsequently done up until this point, building the relationship between Garber and Ryder, is ruined by Scott’s need to inject some unnecessary pace and action into proceedings. By doing so, the audience is left with a somewhat tepid conclusion that sadly goes off the rails.