Directed by Joseph Sargent • 1974 • United States
Starring Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam

One of the definitive cinematic time capsules of New York in the good-bad old days of the 1970s, this crackling urban-jungle thriller begins when a quartet of gunmen in trench coats—led by the coolly methodical mastermind Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw)—hijack a subway train and hold the passengers hostage for a ransom of one million dollars. Now, harried Transit Police Lieutenant Zachary Garber (Walter Matthau), caught between the group’s demands and the endless frustrations of the city’s ineffectual bureaucracy, finds himself racing against time to deliver the money—or else.