Opting for straight - line suspense, the filmmakers had to forgo subjective cutaways like the plainclothes cop's reflections on his tortuous relationship with a Third - World - infatuated feminist; again, Stone writes in a more bedrock commentary on metropolitan backsliding by refusing to reveal which of the hostages is the cop, so that the police monitoring the
stolen train are led to wonder whether it's a man or a woman and chauvinistically calculate a woman's chances for taking effective action against the
hijackers.