"The Taking of Pelham 123" is your run of the mill action-packed, summer blockbuster. There are bullets, body counts, witty one-liners and, most significantly, a cat and a mouse. The cat is a bad guy played by John Travolta. He hijacks a NYC subway. The mouse is a good guy played by Denzel Washington. He is a civil service employee in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The heart of this movie is about the hostage negotiation which doubles as the formation of the relationship between Washington and Travolta. This relationship is at once unique and commonplace. What transpires between the two central characters is a seemingly illogical, one-way bromance that is, upon closer look, a staple of the hostage genre.
The formula goes like this: bad guy comes to inexplicably and obsessively befriend the good guy despite the fact that there is no shared common ground or reciprocated positive feelings. In "Kiss the Girls," for instance, a bad guy kidnaps women for the sole purpose of playing mind games with the detective working the case. In "Phone Booth" a bad guy forces a man to have a moral awakening at gunpoint, on principle. The list is endless and "Pelham 123" is at the top of it in terms of articulating this disturbed version of the odd couple. Considering the affair that Travolta experiences with Washington, romantic music might as well be playing below the police sirens, gunshots and screams.
This unexpectedly common bromance illustrates a common and robust psychological process that the literature terms scapegoat theory It is this theory that underlies Travolta's pathology and, in turn, the dysfunctional bromance.
This theory forms through a cinematica foruma, a recipe for creating the emotional power to hostage movies: one sociopath, one grudge, one bewildered everyman and one randomly unifying event. Travolta is the sociopath. We note this instantly, as the opening scenes show him boarding the subway Pelham 123 dressed in a black ski mask jammed tightly over dark black shades. As if wearing shades in a dark subway tunnel was not enough spell "badass," he also sports a dark black tattoo on his neck. Neck tattoos, I believe, are a universal signal to the rest of the world that you have either been in jail or are going there real soon. Scapegoat theory also depends upon the sociopath holding an epic grudge against an identifiable out-group. In this case, Travolta despises the city of new york for interrupting his ponzi scheme and throwing him behind bars.
Washington is the bewildered everyman. He picks up Travolta's hostage call and receives the unregulated hostility that Travolta releases toward anyone in his path. However, once a small, seemingly irrelevant detail becomes known - Washington is under investigation by the city of new york for accepting a bribe - everything changes, and Washington becomes Travolta's rosebud.
The unifying event is the legal prosecution (persecution, if you ask Travolta) executed by the city of new york. This event forms the basis of the scapegoat theory, as Washington and Travolta, in Travolta's mind at least, are now members of the same in-group, the victims of the city of new york club.
The scapegoat theory, you see, is about harboring an overly simplistic worldview that draws a line between 'us" and "them" and good versus evil. Think President Bush's you're-either-with-us-or-against-us attitude. In this perspective, everyone is automatically sorted into the "us" in-group of NYC victims or the out-group of NYC enforcers. Similarities among in-group members and differences between out-group members are exaggerated into rigid stereotypes. And the emotional stakes attached to membership is high. The out-group is perceived as evil by Travolta, as evidenced by his violent rejection of those that represent NYC: he kills the subway driver, taunts the NYC police, hisses at the official hostage negotiator and verbally lambasts the mayor.
Washington, in stark contrast, makes the cut, and in so doing causes uni-directional love to soar. It starts with general affinity. Travolta says that Washington "may be the last friend he ever makes." But the affinity is seen through a distorted lens that amplifies and exaggerates the perceived relationship, similar to the Borderline Personality Disordered stalker played by Glen Close in "Fatal Attraction." First, Travolta insists that Washington be the only communicator during the hostage negotiation. Next, Travolta googles Washington's legal woes and grills him on the bribe accusation. At times, he seems to cares most about Washington's somewhat victimized position (He did receive the bribe, but it was for his daughter's college tuition. He swears). In perhaps the most emotionally stirring scene, Travolta threatens to kill hostages in order to receive a public confession from Washington.
Scapegoat theory notes that this in-group/out-group identification process is unconscious. It can occur in the mentally ill (i.e. the Travolta sociopath) or, sometimes, normal minds tip into mental illness. This tipping effect happens when healthy, "normal" minds are overwhelmed during situations of extreme stress and conflict (i.e. mass panic during a natural disaster like the looting during Hurricane Katrina). Research shows that the top triggers of this problematic mentality are "being preoccupied, pressed for time, physically fatigued and emotionally aroused." These are normal stresses. Consequently, not only is Travolta unaware of his unfounded affection toward Washington, but he exhibits the same symptoms we all might exhibit under intense stress, particularly if something like Travolta's pathology is added to the mix.
The two headline actors in this internal drama are the defense mechanisms known as displaced anger and projection.
Travolta unconsciously harbors anger toward himself. Perhaps he hates himself for getting caught, or for being greedy, or for getting the neck tattoo. The explanation isn't important. What is important is that he reroutes all that self-anger toward the out-group - the city of new york. Without fail, every time he commits an evil act he blames the city of new york. As his self-anger remains unmanaged and unnoticed, it eventually boils over into the highest form of self-anger - suicidality. He meticulously plans and executes a hostage situation that is really a suicide mission. He freely admits as much to Washington within the first third of the movie. In the end, after the real plan is disrupted (suicide by cop), he initiates plan B, suicide by Washington. In the heated standoff on the Brooklyn Bridge (an unfortunately clichéd ending), Travolta literally threatens and begs Washington to shoot him. Washington does shoot him, but we instinctively exonerate him because we the viewers subconsciously know that the trigger is really being pulled by Travolta's displaced anger. If only a Freudian Analyst had gotten to Travolta first.
Projection is perhaps the element of scapegoat theory most responsible for the dysfunctional bromance. Basically, Travolta looks at Washington and see's himself. This blurred boundary between self and other crystallizes toward the end of the movie, as Travolta makes allusions to Washington as himself. "If he were in prison, he'd be my bitch," he says of Washington. But Washington was not in prison, he was. Further, Travolta demands that Washington handle the hostage money transfer, then demands that Washington stay on the train and assist in the getaway. He even offers Washington a potential stake in the hostage money. Washington is not a member of the chain gang, he is. A defense mechanism, by definition, distorts reality. In this case, the mistrustful and detached Travolta develops a distorted perception of Washington as trusted, beloved partner in crime, instead of the morally upstanding citizen and bewildered everyman indicated by the hard evidence.
