Short Takes

THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE The old generalization says that Los Angeles movies are organized horizontally (desert, suburbs, freeway) while New York movies are vertical (steel canyons, penthouses, skyscrapers). This tip-top 1974 crime thriller, the King Kong of Big Apple caper movies, is both, rocketing along the rails with a hijacked subway while zooming from high to low through the city’s infrastructure. Four criminals with color code names (sound familiar, Reservoir Dogs fans?) threaten to snuff a car full of passengers unless they get a whopping $1 million—adjust for inflation, especially in cash-strapped mid-1970s New York—in one hour’s time. While transit cop Walter Matthau duels with icy mastermind Robert Shaw, director Joseph Sargent (an unheralded talent worthy of a retrospective) and screenwriter Peter Stone hinge the passengers’ fates on the interlocked dysfunction of various municipal agencies—making this one of the great movies about a city’s inner workings. Matthau, sporting a banana-yellow tie from the Fred Flintstone collection, makes a hilarious yet wholly credible action hero, and a veritable mug-shot book of ’70s character actors—among them a pre-Seinfeld Jerry Stiller—pops Stone’s surly wisecracks like M-80s. Poignantly low-impact in the wake of 9/11, this remains a time capsule of embattled NYC pride, cut to a growling David Shire score that cruises like a mack’s Caddy; small wonder the Beastie Boys gave it a shout-out in “Sure Shot.” And speaking of sure shots, the one that ends the movie is a beaut. —Jim Ridley (Showing Feb. 9-10 at the Belcourt’s Nashville Film Noir Festival; critic Craig D. Lindsey introduces the 7 p.m. show Saturday)

VINCE VAUGHN’S WILD WEST COMEDY SHOW: 30 DAYS & 30 NIGHTS—HOLLYWOOD TO THE HEARTLAND Even at 100 minutes, this documentary about Vaughn and pals’ 2005 bus tour from L.A. to Chicago (and all points in between, including our own Ryman Auditorium) plays a little long—due to the “comedy show” part mostly, which is filled with such antiquated bits as “Starbucks customers order the damnedest things,” “dudes who show off their iPods in the gym are douchebags,” and “techno music’s for tone-deaf stoners.” Echoing the far more successful Comedians of Comedy, Ari Sandel’s backstage-diving doc showcases the grind of life on the road. Only, Vaughn’s fab foursome—amiable irritant John Caparulo, nostalgic Bret Ernst, would-be waiter Sebastian Maniscalco and proud Muslim Ahmed Ahmed—are thrilled to be along for the ride. The doc provides plenty of backstory. (Meeting the comics’ families offers generous context to material heard earlier in the film.) But in the end, it’s the bits involving Vaughn and his celeb guests that linger, chief among them two re-enactments—one during which Justin Long reads Vaughn’s part from Swingers with Jon Favreau, and another in which Vaughn re-enacts his part from a 1991 CBS Schoolbreak Special about steroid use with his actual co-star, A Christmas Story’s all-growed-up Peter Billingsley. Also on hand: Dwight Yoakam, Buck Owens and Keir O’Donnell—or, as he’s always referred to, “the gay guy” from Wedding Crashers. —Robert Wilonsky (Opens Friday)