In its purest form, the relationship between actor and director can be a sacred thing–a symbiosis that yields transcendent results.  Whether it’s Scorsese-De Niro, Ford-Wayne, Kazan-Brando, or Hitchcock-Stewart, the mention of one invariably invokes thoughts of the other.  But what happens when half of a particular tandem fails to match the talent of the other?

“The Takin of Pelham 123″ happens.

“Pelham” marks the fourth collaboration between Denzel Washington and Tony Scott after “Man on Fire,” “Crimson Tide,” and “Déjà Vu.”  Tony, the younger and less talented brother of “Blade Runner” director, Ridley, has managed to get by with the help of Washington, one of the best actors of his generation. Their relationship is inexplicable.  Tony’s films are amalgamations of excessive jump-cuts, awkward freeze-frames, unnecessary close-ups, and laughably misplaced titles and cues only made watchable by Washington’s presence. A remake of the 1974 film starring Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw, this go-around continues the tradition of weirdly inept direction of the talented star.

The plot is simple enough. A criminal mastermind calling himself Ryder, played by an utterly unconvincing John Travolta, hijacks a subway car filled with passengers and holds it for a ransom of $10 million, vowing to shoot a passenger for every minute the cash fails to arrive after a specified deadline.

The rest of the film isn’t important. What begins as a run of the mill summer popcorn flick good for a few cheap thrills steadily devolves into a comedy of increasingly astounding errors.  Inane and hilariously exaggerated car crashes, ridiculous expository sequences, tonally disjointed and erratic characterization, and banal technical gimmickry used to mask the absurdity of the narrative plague the final act.  This is not a good movie.

And with the deflating recent announcement that Scott and Washington will be teaming up on yet another project, one can only hope that Denzel finds his way into some better movies in the interim.