Cast and Characters (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) is an ensemble film whose cast extends well beyond its structural poles, the four hijackers and the transit police lieutenant who negotiate across a radio frequency, into the dispatchers, control-room operators, mayor's staff, and hostages who give the film its texture. The cross-section registers as a functioning organism rather than a collection of types.
The hijackers
Robert Shaw as Mr. Blue (Bernard Ryder), a former British mercenary who runs the operation with professional detachment. Shaw plays Blue as a man who has done worse and expects this to be routine, his performance offering neither backstory nor motivation speech, only surface discipline maintained so consistently that the rare breaks in composure — a flash of contempt for Mr. Grey's recklessness, a tightening when the timeline slips — register as events.
Martin Balsam as Mr. Green (Harold Longman), a fired motorman hired for his technical knowledge of the subway system. Balsam plays Green as visibly nervous, sweating through a cold he cannot shake, a small physical detail that functions as the film's sharpest plot device because the audience notices it, files it away as incidental color, and remembers it at exactly the moment the police do.
Hector Elizondo as Mr. Grey (Giuseppe Benvenuto), ex-Mafia, the squad's liability. See Hector Elizondo for how he built the performance around stillness rather than volatility.
Earl Hindman as Mr. Brown (George Steever), the least developed of the four, a laconic presence who fills out the tactical squad. Hindman would later become known as the neighbor on Home Improvement (1991–1999), visible only from the nose up, a partial visibility that rhymes with Brown's underdevelopment here.
See The Color-Coded Hijackers for Peter Stone's alias system and its migration to Tarantino.
The law
Walter Matthau as Lt. Zachary Garber, the Transit Authority police lieutenant who negotiates the crisis from the control center. See Walter Matthau for how the performance works through ordinariness.
Jerry Stiller as Lt. Rico Patrone, Garber's counterpart in the field, coordinating the tactical response above ground. Stiller plays the role straight, decades before Seinfeld and King of Queens would make his face synonymous with sitcom comedy, a performance whose restraint registers as a reminder that the later comic persona was built on a foundation of stage training and dramatic range.
James Broderick as Denny Doyle, the train dispatcher who serves as Garber's operational partner in the control center. Broderick, Matthew Broderick's father, provides the film's technical voice, translating the subway system's mechanics for the audience through dialogue that emerges as the natural speech of a man who has worked these tunnels for years, never breaking character to deliver exposition even when the plot requires the audience to understand a system they have no reason to know.
The city
The supporting cast spreads across the city's power structure: Dick O'Neill as the transit authority supervisor, Lee Wallace as the mayor sick in bed at Gracie Mansion weighing the political cost of paying the ransom, Tony Roberts as the deputy mayor, Kenneth McMillan and Doris Roberts as hostages. The casting runs deep enough that every speaking role registers as a specific person in a specific job rather than a type filling a dramatic function, an achievement that belongs to Joseph Sargent's direction as much as to any individual performance.
"What's good about 'Pelham's' example of the form is that the performances are allowed enough leeway so that we care about the people, not the plot mechanics. And what could have been formula trash turns out to be fairly classy trash, after all." — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (1974)
"The large, well-characterized cast is ably headed by Walter Matthau, whose wonderfully weary sense of irony is perfect." — John H. Dorr, The Hollywood Reporter (1974)