A tale of three cities
Curiously enough, in the strange way that truth often trumps fiction, at the time our real-life hostage drama was being played out near the Quirino Grandstand, the movie The Taking of Pelham 123 was being shown on HBO.
I caught it in the afternoon, and found myself mesmerized by the insane yet lucid character played by John Travolta in this 2009 Tony Scott remake of the 1974 hit. Travolta plays Ryder, a disgraced Wall Street executive who, having served time in prison, decides to hijack a New York City subway train, holding innocent passengers hostage and eventually killing a number of them. I mention this not to trivialize the recent tragedy but to point out how fiction and reality mirror and feed into one another in sometimes uncanny ways, and how one blends or should I say, bleeds into the other.
The film opens with Denzel Washington’s character Walter Garber going about his usual business of dispatching trains. It is, after all, a day like any other in the Big Apple. As Garber’s workplace bristles with typical office politics, the subway bustles with commuters. Into this unremarkable day walks the psychopath Ryder with his gang of hijackers. The rest is the stuff of action drama that keeps us glued to our seats. Does it resolve nicely? This being a Hollywood movie (and not an angst-ridden film noir, nor a postmodern indie, nor an idée fixe masquerading as cinema), the requisite twists and turns of plot do straighten out in the end and the villains get their comeuppance.
But this is also a movie about New York City. One may gripe about Manhattan and its often-depicted moral bankruptcy, its superficiality, its share of crazy denizens (think Michael Douglas’s Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street; think Tom Wolfe or Bret Easton Ellis or Jay McInerney), but one can’t deny its sheer power, the centuries of American will pounded into its very pavements, hammered into its institutions and people, girding its infrastructure, shooting through its skyscrapers the most visible symbols of its might while arousing the adulation and envy of the rest of the world, the fear and loathing of some (such that some had to knock down a couple of those symbols some years ago, the anniversary of which is commemorated this week). No doubt, this metropolis is the juggernaut of America.
Does Ryder buck the system? Ryder is the rogue element that challenges the system, and for a while we’re made to think he’ll succeed. But alas, it isn’t only Wall Street he’s up against. Ryder is mistaken in thinking it’s all about money a sphere that he knows very well and so he leverages human life, ostensibly for $10 million but actually for an obscenely fraudulent share of the gold market, a far bigger take than his ransom payoff.
However, while his ploy agitates the city and brings Wall Street crashing down, the city finds a way to recoup. For every variable that Ryder throws into the system, the city manages to marshal its resources and its forces to defend itself. The real protagonist is The City manifested in the lives of the ordinary citizens that hold it up. The citizens all flawed characters make up the nuts and bolts that keep the city humming.
Garber is a humble dispatcher, who only wants to do an honest day’s job so that he can provide for his family; nevertheless he’s summoned against his will to perform acts of quiet heroism. Lt. Caminetti (John Turturro) is the hotshot NYPD negotiator taken a notch down from his hubris when Ryder rejects his offer of negotiation and he’s forced to take a backseat to Garber; he still manages to give Garber his unstinting support. The none-too-smart Mayor (James Gandolfini) is a harried politician in the thick of a divorce who is caught flatfooted by the onslaught of events but somehow displays a hardboiled practicality that cuts through the confusion. The NYPD screeching police cars, snipers, motorcycles, helicopters and all unleashes its might and, though it shows (almost comical) signs of cracking under pressure, it eventually delivers. By themselves, they are a vulnerable lot so vulnerable in fact that Ryder is able to scramble their wits and keep them in near panic in order to meet his demands.
But then the fundamentals take over. Faced with a common enemy, the citizens close ranks. Each one is connected to the other by a common bond, a common realization that they’re in it together, that they’re fighting for each other and for a city that is their home, now threatened with ruin by a madman who cares nothing for it. Together they create a synergy far greater than their individual efforts can accomplish, like a force field of protection.
What Ryder has failed to factor in, in his blind greed, is the strength of the city anchored on the basic decency and common sense of its citizens and the integrity of its institutions. Against the chaos and terror sown by Ryder, the city pits its wisdom, and because it is wisdom grounded on a commitment to fundamental virtues respect for life, law, and liberty virtues that serve as the bedrock of a sound and humane social order the city, despite its initial fumbles, wins in the end and peace is restored. The subway trains resume their daily paths, and everybody goes home, including Ryder (to his Maker and Judge). The Mayor returns to his constituents a more inspired man. Garber goes home, a carton of milk in hand an errand he promised his wife. For these plucky New Yorkers, another day’s work has come to a close.
If I had seen this movie at another time I might have dismissed it as just another one of Hollywood’s pleasant diversions and promptly forgotten it the next day. But a few hours later, there I was with my family, watching in shock as live coverage of the actual hostage situation involving a bus full of tourists unfolded in Manila. Déjà vu, I told myself, my heart sinking with each scene, my gloom deepening with each blow-by-blow account. Automatically I searched my mind for anything I had learned from the movie. If The Taking of Pelham 123 was, to a certain extent, a plausible portrayal of how an American city responds to a crisis, with all its errors and recoveries as I believe it is, as New Yorkers after 9/11 proved then the insights gained from it would perhaps be valid. Come to think of it, the movie actually taught me a thing or two about a hostage situation. Hollywood does have its uses.
First of all, it became clear that, after Caminetti botched the initial negotiations that cost one hostage’s life, there would be two premises to guide the responses of the negotiating team: 1) the hostage-taker was serious that is, he meant what he said and you’d better believe it; and 2) the hostage taker was dangerous at best he would be calculating, though unpredictable and volatile, nursing grievances whether real or imagined; at worst he would be a psychopath, falling apart with each move, if not already completely unhinged. In other words, the hostage taker was to be treated like a walking time bomb or a loose cannon with the power to follow through his threats and bring many down with him; therefore, he must be handled with care.
In the movie, there was one top priority: save lives. As Caminetti told Garber, giving him a “crash course” in hostage negotiating: “Preservation of life. That’s our mission.” In contrast to Ryder who treated people like commodities down to their exact quantification (“What’s the going rate for a New York City hostage today? $526,315.79.”), the negotiating team directed all their efforts to keeping the hostages alive. Neutralizing the hijackers was a priority, but even this was secondary to saving lives. If the act of killing a hijacker or his accomplices endangered the lives of innocent civilians, then it ceased to be an option, at least for the moment. The sniper had his sights on Ryder’s number two man (“Easy shot. Please advise.”) but could not get the go-signal to fire, presumably until it was determined that this would be the least destabilizing move.
There were several teams closely working with each other on a coherent strategy that had a clear-cut chain of command. While they lacked control of the circumstances and had to roll with the punches so to speak, they came together and acted as one, as though following a blueprint set in place long before such a crisis like this could happen. As soon as the hostage-taking incident was reported to the police, the NYPD sent in an experienced negotiating team to the Rail Control Center to handle the emergency and run operations.
In the meantime, an assault unit was put in place underground led by a tunnel commander who awaited instructions from the negotiating team. Metropolitan Transport Authority staff at the Center provided the research and background information needed. Since the ransom demand involved a huge sum from the city’s coffers, the mayor and his deputy were sent for. Back at the Center, the city’s stakeholders put their heads together to constantly assess each contingency, as new demands were imposed by Ryder and as new information was uncovered by the research team. This central command was always directly in touch with the ground and, through Garber, with the lead hijacker himself. As a result, feedback was immediate and the necessary response could be made.
When described in this way, it all sounds so orderly, when in fact it wasn’t. Hostage-taking cannot be anything but chaotic. And hostage-taking undertaken by a crazed pro with the smarts of a hardened high-rolling Wall Street trader who also happens to be an ex-con is chaos calibrated to perfection. But while the crisis caught the city off-guard, it was also clear that the city had the resources to respond and respond it did. Reaction time was quick. As each citizen did what he or she had to do, the institutions kicked in. Each part of the city the police department, the subway system, the mayor’s office, the citizenry, yes, even the media knew what it had to do. Training and habit centuries of discipline and hard work and an unsentimental, hard-bitten commitment to their ideals had turned the city into a well-oiled machinery that was flexible enough to adapt, resilient enough to bounce back from errors, and cunning enough to create new responses.
Of course, one can say this is Holly-wood where the good guys always win. But 9/11 was not and the good guys won. While the movie presents us with a fictitious post-9/11 scenario, where the city of New York presumably had experience in the area of crisis management, 9/11 was a true-to-life disaster that hit New York City literally out of the blue. And while America reeled, New York’s response in the aftermath showed us what it could do. One may love or hate America for a whole lot of reasons but one has to hand it to the people what they did after that beastly terrorist attack was one of their shining moments. This story of how New York City grappled with devastation and triumphed will live on and never be taken away from them.
I pause to reflect on Manila’s response to the taking of the Hong Thai Travel bus and the 25 hostages trapped inside, realizing that our response to any disaster reflects on us as a people our character and values; our humanity, or lack of it; our culture and institutions; our national strength or weakness. President Noynoy remarked that the reason he and his cabinet kept a low profile was that he wanted to “see our institutions work.” A laudable intention, except that it presumed that our institutions were sound. On that fateful day, Monday, Aug. 23, he got his answer. On that day sandwiched between the death anniversary of his father Ninoy who sacrificed his life for the sake of us worthy Filipinos, and National Heroes’ Day when we celebrate everything that is heroic about our race we proved to ourselves and to the world that our institutions are brittle, our values are cheap, our national life is chaotic, our souls are hollow, and our culture has so coarsened over time that we can’t even distinguish between a rescue and a circus.
For circus it was, bedlam on a merry-go-round, Sturm und Drang Philippine style, with broadcast media peddling the drama like a daily noontime show or a primetime soap, ignorant of the stakes involved in their ruinous network wars. How had we come to this? How did the situation deteriorate so fast?
The taking of the Hong Thai Travel tour bus started congenially enough. On television (or the Internet) we saw how the hostage taker couldn’t have picked a better time and place: a wide expanse of open space at the historic Quirino Grandstand, and a day bright and clear. He managed to portray himself as a reasonable, almost amiable man, releasing some 10 hostages in batches after some of his demands were met, and assuring the rest that he meant them no harm, even solicitously providing for their snacks. A YouTube video shows him standing at the door of the bus and waving at the camera, looking far from troubled. Only the threat notices posted on the bus windows gave any indication of his grim intentions. Some passengers seated by the window a couple of women, a young man could be seen peering through the curtains with anxious eyes. Just outside the bus, a man in an orange shirt, who turned out to be one of the negotiators, walked by, grinning. Several meters away, in the perimeter of the cordoned area, a policeman was caught peeing by a tree (or at least adjusting something in front of him).
Was this hostage-taking, Philippine style? What could go wrong in a land of smiling people, jokesters, showbiz politicos, rags-to-riches melodramas, song and dance? Why, perhaps even the hostage taker may not be taken seriously!
And perhaps it was this thinking that caused everything else to go wrong on that fateful day a fatal habit of mind, a slapdash, slipshod “puede na” mentality that has bedeviled our national character and occasioned many a self-conscious ribbing, as though it were a thing to laugh at. For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; for want of a horse, the battle was lost. And so on down the line of responsibility, we find that this habit of mind triggered a chain of events, the consequences increasing in magnitude.
In the course of the DOJ probe under the direction of Secretary Leila de Lima, we’ve been able to get a clearer understanding of the circumstances of that day. Witnesses have been summoned to give their testimonies and recount the scenes in which they played a part. Their answers merely confirm the observation that the events leading to the tragedy revealed a plan and execution sorely wanting in coherence, foresight and decisive action. Succeeding blunders exposed the faulty assumptions of the committee and the PNP command, the lack of intelligence information and coordination, and faulty tactics. Instead of maintaining a sense of urgency and alertness for untoward circumstances, there was complacency. Instead of resolving the crisis as swiftly as possible so as to minimize risks, there was an easy, almost-careless disregard for time. Members of the crisis team and the ground command seem to have underestimated the situation. When adverse factors arose, they were caught off-guard and events quickly spun out of control.
The fictitious Pelham 123, and the real-life experience of 9/11 on which the movie remake was incidentally based, demonstrate that cities are the gauge of national character. As goes a city, so go its people; as are the people, so is their city. As national grief, fury and shame turn into a sober and critical assessment of the facts, this may be the best time to remember that the way we handle this stage of the crisis may make or break us as a people. The immediate aftermath of 9/11 showed that, armed with human grit, a national devastation can be turned into a resounding triumph for a people’s soul, such that what was meant to destroy them only made them stronger. In a similar way, how can we transform this, our national disgrace, into something that will speak truly of who we are deep down as a people? Lives lost can never be retrieved. Let this grief linger with us, to honor the dead, and to disabuse us of our propensity for levity. But surely there must be something in us buried under the muck of corruption, poverty, ignorance, moral apathy, spiritual blindness, all of which have transmogrified into entrenched structures which we can still redeem, though it might take all our collective strength and wits to do so. Surely the history, heritage and ideals of our premier city which are ours as well speak of some greatness still. If there’s more than an ounce of decency, or shred of honor left in us as a people, is it not worth all the trouble of doing the right thing, this time?
What story shall we tell of our city, and ourselves? What story shall be told of us as a people?
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Your comments are welcome. E-mail me at urbanpilgrim2010@yahoo.com.
