MONEY TRAIN
A film review by Anthony E. Wright
Copyright 1995 Anthony E. Wright
At the New York Transit Museum, a abandoned subway station in Brooklyn that vividly shows the history of one of the finest and largest public transportation systems in the world, a movie theater is lined with photos of classic straphanger-oriented films from the past. But the cinematic romance with the underground is still alive: this impressive display (which includes THE FRENCH CONNECTION, THE WARRIORS, and DEATH WISH) does not include the recent spate of movies paying homage to public transportation, like DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? and GHOST. Sandra Bullock is single-handedly making public transportation sexy, more than all the "Miss Subways" pageants of old, with the big hits SPEED and WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING.
The new exhibit at the Transit Museum last week, alongside subway cars from the 1904 to the present, is the actual cab used in the filming of the MONEY TRAIN, a new film focusing on a fictional train which collect millions of dollars a day in token sales. (While the New York Transit Authority does have 20 revenue collection cars, this shiny fortress-like version is a Hollywood creation.) A helpful tour guide says that four such models were made, but the other three were blown up.
That fact is basically what you need to know about the MONEY TRAIN: it's a thrilling action adventure where trains rollick around quickly and blow up, like SPEED. The other main fact is that it stars Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson, doing similar action roles as in their transportation-based thrillers PASSENGER 57 and THE COWBOY WAY, respectively.
But the reference is clearly to the similarly hip and urban romp WHITE MEN CAN'T JUMP, to which MONEY TRAIN is basically a sequel. The characters even seem similar: Snipes plays a trash-talking show-off who is grounded in the urban scene; Harrelson plays a white guy who has a black sensibility, which provides wonderful comic possibilities, but the character has gambling, identity, and other problems. In MONEY TRAIN, the two are dubbed "the transit twins," as foster brothers doing undercover transit police work. Just to play it safe, Jennifer Lopez is brought in to play the attractive Hispanic female, although without the schtick of Rosie Perez. (Lopez would have stolen the movie away from the male leads if not for a truly horrible characterization by the writers.) But even if the characters do seem awfully familiar, we get enough plot, which offers more than just padding for the action.
It's a good movie, action-packed with just enough sass, humour, energy and seriousness to keep it interesting throughout. It gets the adrenaline pumping. However, I must confess that as a mass-transit buff, and a New Yorker with an admiration of the subways, I might be biased.
The question I asked when the film ended, and that my companions did, and that the country is now asking given recent news events, is: Why did the TA agree to help with this film? Not only does it make the TA look like idiots, and portrays the subways as especially dangerous, but also gives people some stupid ideas: running around on tracks, riding on top of subway cars, torching subway token booths, jumping in front of trains, and (oh, yeah) stealing money trains.
With the recent torching of a token booth that could have been a "copycat" act, the old questions about how the media affect society are dramatized as a token clerk sits in the hospital with serious, life-threatening problems. The normal responsible line is to say that violence in context is fine (a la SCHINDLER'S LIST) but violence for pure titillation is not (a.k.a. RAMBO). Shouldn't movies portray events which do occur--like booth torchings, which happening a couple of times in the 1980s? Or do we want a sanitized media, free from real-life events and problems? Perhaps the torching was over-the-top: they didn't show the consequences of a booth torching, as the token clerk survived unscathed in the movie; and they didn't show that booth now come with sprinkler systems, making it hard for that crime to occur.
With the torching (and the preposterous money train hijacking, which certainly isn't realistic), most of the action stunts in this movie involve stupid and dangerous things. But I must confess, that's what makes the movie exciting: they do the taboo things that as a life-long rider I wouldn't and couldn't do. I've occasionally thought about trying to jump onto the tracks to quickly get to another platform; that makes it more fun when Wesley Snipes does it as a #5 approaches. Sure it's an irresponsible movie (in more ways than one), and unfortunately, that's half the fun.
The other public issue is the question of cooperation: The Transit Authority usually frowns on movies that show the system as "out-of-control." (From the movies, you wouldn't get the facts that a subway station or train is always safer that the streets above it.) Yet the Mayor's Office policy is to let Hollywood do their thing, especially if it means bringing money into the city. Most of the film was in fact filmed on a Hollywood set, due to some TA reluctance. But that's still leaves the question why Hollywood's money train currently sits on New York subway tracks. Perhaps it was stolen.
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