Directed by:
Jaume Collet-SerraCinematography:
Paul CameronComposer:
Roque BañosCast:
Liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Jonathan Banks, Sam Neill, Elizabeth McGovern, Killian Scott, Shazad Latif, Andy Nyman, Clara Lago, Roland Møller (more)Plots(1)
In this action-packed thriller, Liam Neeson stars as Michael, an insurance salesman whose commute home suddenly takes a dangerous turn. After being confronted by a mysterious stranger (Vera Farmiga), Michael must race against time to uncover the identity of a passenger on his train, as he's swept into a conspiracy with life-and-death stakes for himself and his fellow passengers. (Lionsgate Home Entertainment)
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Reviews (10)
I’m surprised that Jaume Collet-Serra keeps on choosing such bad screenplays and then he and Neeson have to hone something sort of watchable out of them. It’s basically a weaker version of Non-Stop when the beginning flirts with Hitchcock-style twist and then makes illogical detours right up to the over the top action finale. Here and there he comes out with an interesting idea, on the other hand, the whole thing seems awfully artificial and digital. Baños’s music is great, however.
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Let me put it mildly and say that the filmmakers didn't do a very good job of making the film. I’ll keep all the curse words to myself. I've never had anything against Liam Neeson. I was there with him when he was rescuing his daughter and wife, or walking over tombstones, and I’ve always been quite satisfied, but I shouldn't have gotten on that train with him. I think an honest tagline for this film could be: How an Aging Insurance Guy Gets Lucky. At least that would have been a red flag for me. Liam Neeson really wasn't up to the role, the plot was stupid and predictable, the ending was incredibly dumb, and I didn’t enjoy this at all. I'm giving it two stars because no trains were harmed during the making of the film.
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This is already the fourth collaboration between Liam Neeson and Jaume Collet-Serra (which had previously worked flawlessly), but it didn’t turn out as I had hoped. I didn’t let the mixed reviews sway me, but the result was not particularly impressive. The idea with the train is fine; the first half can be considered successful, with the viewer unsure of what might happen, and Neeson still manages to convey his worried expression of a man whose wife and son have been abducted. But then, what I feared happened. It turned into a bit of a farce, with logic going out the window, and the plot kept twisting in various directions. I wouldn’t have minded that if it had been presented more reasonably and slowly, allowing the viewer to keep up. Even the fights didn’t manage to save it in the end, which I don’t understand at all. They felt very staged, lacking realism. And the final scene with the train derailment? The digital effects didn’t come across as well as they probably intended. The minor plot twist at the end could have been predicted an hour earlier. I don’t mind happy endings, but here it was over the top. Next time, I’d prefer a proper thriller that plays with suspense rather than a digital train and a convoluted story. I give it 56%.
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Liam Neeson is still badass, but in Commuter he looks like he’s tired of that. His hero has adapted a bit to the situation, he is no longer the unwavering killing machine he was in Taken, but a panting 60 year old son of a bitch who can hardly make it to the wild, digital finale. The finale of an action thriller that is cruelly predictable with its last twist, but nevertheless has some decent pacing and one or two really dramatic and imaginative scenes. Jaume Collet-Serra is still doing his thing and holds the trilogy to a higher standard than Liam did in, say, the severely degraded Taken trilogy. Still, it's quite a lot for the third time, and while it manages to build up tension from the edge and Vera Farmiga seems like an apparition from another planet in those femme fatale 5 minutes, by the second half it’s already running on fumes. Towards the end, only those seemingly inconspicuous characters obediently squeak onto the stage to break up the screenwriter's misery. It is watchable, because the train setting is attractive – Steven Seagal could tell you a thing or two about it.
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Liam Neeson gets on the train in a pretty bad mood, and it's about to get worse when he finds out that Vera Farmiga has manipulated him into a conspiracy in which his neck is on the line. And not just him. The Commuter is a solid action flick, and exactly what you'd expect from the makers of Unknown and Non-Stop. But you can tell they're running out of ideas. It still paces pretty well and you get exactly what you expect in the cinema, but not a tad more. I quite enjoyed it, but I would have liked to see Neeson and director Jaume Collet-Serra move on to other projects and maybe even genres. They don't have much to offer here anymore.
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