There comes a point at roughly the half-hour mark of the new and thoroughly unnecessary remake of The Taking Of Pelham 123 where you can practically hear director Tony Scott -- patron saint of the unnecessary whip pan, lord of the loaded handgun, purveyor of high speed pursuits -- choking out a strangled cry of "Must .... make .... something .... MOOOOOOOOOOVE!"

Poor guy, that Tony. He's spent his entire career building a relentlessly kinetic film style, cranking out reliably slick but mindless adrenaline pumpers only to sign on to make what is essentially a chamber drama. Don't let the trailers fool you: this ain't no big chase film. No, for the bulk of Pelham what you've got is Denzel Washington sitting behind a desk talking on a radio to John Travolta, sitting in a cramped little room. It is the antithesis of a standard Tony Scott premise. And Scott, it must be said, seems to have achieved a sort of transcendent desperation with the whole scenario, a desperation that leads him to do inexplicable things with his camera. Things like literally running in circles around James Gandolfini to try and trick the audience into thinking something exciting is happening when really all that's going on is a quiet conversation on a street corner.

The premise, for those unaware, is this: Washington is Walter Garber, a disgraced official for New York's MTA who's busted back down to serving as a dispatcher while under investigation for some shady dealings. He just happens to be working the desk when Travolta's Ryder leads an organized gang of thugs in a tightly orchestrated hostage-taking aboard a New York subway train. Cue the battle of wits over the radio as Washington and Travolta go head to head to try and bring things to their particular desired conclusions.

On a good day, Pelham 123 could stand a fighting chance of being a serviceable Die Hard knock off. But, alas, anyone who has seen Die Hard will know from the word go that the supposed heist is not at all the point and Walter Garber just ain't no John McClane. The film plays out by the numbers, exactly as you would expect it to -- and there's nothing wrong with that, really, but Scott's irrestistible urge to amp up the film style spoils the film's one great asset -- that being the cast. Sure, it's been a while since Washington and Travolta were in something really good, but they've both still got chops, and when your supporting cast includes the likes of Gandolfini, Luis Guzman and John Turturro, all you really need to do is put the camera on a tripod and let them go to work to get something exceptional. But Scott does exactly the opposite. It's hard to say whether he doesn't trust his actors or just doesn't care about them, but it's pretty clear that he's far more interested in how he's shooting than he is in what he's shooting. He just never gives any of his actors the space to work, just as he doesn't give the characters any time to breathe, and the end result is a lot of pretty (though often very silly) pictures that make enough noise to prevent boredom but never connect in any significant way.

The Taking of Pelham 123 is the latest example of a dying breed of movies, the big actor-based event picture. Time was, you could pay a couple big actors ten million or so each on the assumption that their names alone would be enough to draw in at least double that in the opening weekend. But that attitude also represents the decline of star-based films.

A name just isn't enough any more. You can sell a film on concept alone. You can sell a film on action. You can sell a film on effects. But a name? Not if there isn't some meat to back it up, and there just isn't enough meat here.