Tony Scott’s remake of the semi-classic of 1974 begins and ends badly. The opening credits are shot in such an overwrought style that you’re not sure what’s happening. Then, 100 minutes later, the final confrontation between hero and villain is absurd.

In between is a reasonably slick thriller in which subway worker Walter (Denzel Washington) and psychotic crook Ryder (John Travolta) do battle over a hijacked train full of terrified passengers, both actors substituting competently for Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw in the original.

Scott secured unprecedented access to the New York subway and uses it almost as a secondary character. He also has the benefit of a halfway decent screenplay from Brian Helgeland, of LA Confidential fame. At one point, James Gandolfini, as the ruffled Mayor of New York, says, “I left my Rudi Giuliani suit at home.”

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Not much else is funny as Walter tries to save the passengers by engaging Ryder in long-range conversation. Travolta is truly nasty as the criminal — a financial wizard who intends to put the ransom into a stock that’s going to double — and Washington plays the hero without seeming too much like a star pretending to be an ordinary guy.

Whether it is thrilling depends upon how well you remember of Joseph Sargent’s original, which was slower but more thoughtful and less keen to astonish with its directorial flourishes.

But telling the story straight is never quite enough for Scott. What’s more, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film in which women play a smaller part. This is not exactly a buddy-buddy movie but the least you can say for its male-oriented cast of mind is that it moves, and it moves pretty fast.