"The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3," a remake of the original (in which "One Two Three" was spelled out) is an efficient, capable thriller, a yarn that can be enjoyed both as an escape from reality as well as an insight into the social struggles of the here and now. Just as the original in 1974 reflected a city caught at a crossroads, a flawed metropolis where increasingly every man and woman had to fend for themselves, so does this movie reflect a world exiting the gilded age of the '90s, where some balance is being restored to the insanity.

I find it ironic that the movie all but avoids New York City's financial district - where the credit-default swaps and derivatives were first conceived that eventually became the globe's weapons of financial destruction. It's an observation that might not matter if not for the stock charts that pop up halfway through the movie. The object of the first film was cold, hard cash, but the objective this time is far more sinister. Without giving it away, let me say this: Dumb criminals take hostages, smart criminals know how to play the markets.

For anyone familiar with the original, the premise this time around won't quite surprise. Ryder - played with zeal by a twitchy John Travolta - is a criminal who executes his plan perfectly, aided by Luis Guzman and two other twitchy trigger fingers. They take command of a subway train, dislodge one car from the rest and come to a rest somewhere beneath Grand Central Station.

They pick up the radio and get Walter Garber (Denzel Washington), a disgraced muckety muck in the subway authority who has been demoted pending an investigation into his taking a bribe by a Japanese train company that wanted a lucrative train contract. Ryder demands $10 million of Garber in 60 minutes. Each minute that the money is late will result in a dead hostage. As Garber contacts the mayor, Ryder rigs up a wireless Internet connection and tunes into cnbc.com.

The first "Pelham" was a movie about good people trying to fight through a bad situation, about evil men with evil plots who had the power to bring a dozen lives to a standstill. But I couldn't help but sense the shifts in tone with director Tony Scott's version.

For starters, the cops are out in force. Once word of the hijacking gets out, the troops are roused and dispatched. It feels as if the city comes down like a thunderbolt on the scene. Given Garber's flaws, there's a surprising level of identification between the criminal and the civil servant; after all, Ryder says, they're both bad men, screwed over by the same system.

What makes this version engaging is that sense of camaraderie, as well as Travolta's frenzied and violent behavior. He's laughable and overbearing at times, cursing like a drunken sailor, but it's hard not to admit that Travolta turns Ryder into a ticking time bomb of instability. Anything is possible with a gun is his hands, and people die even when we're not quite expecting it.

There's also a sense here though that the real criminals are not the guys with the guns. Their missions are petty when considering those crooks downtown, in that sector of the city that we never quite see. I think this is important; it's a statement of sorts that Garber's $30,000 bribe, which first piqued his interest because he doesn't make enough money to send his kids to private school, is a whole lot different than the hundreds of millions being squeezed out of the system by the men in suits and ties.

Taken to a helicopter so he can take the bundles of money to Ryder, Garber looks out over the skyline and his colleague observes that he likes seeing the city from this perspective. "It reminds you what you're fighting for." This isn't a world of every man for himself, it's a world where we have to remember that doing the right thing goes beyond your front porch. There's a sniff of redemption in the air with this "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3," which celebrates the fact that owning up to your mistakes and doing good can turn disgrace into heroism.

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