It's odd to think that there was a time when Liam Neeson wasn't primarily known for being a major action star. As someone who was 9 years old at the time of the original Taken's release, this is the only Liam Neeson I've ever really known. I grew up playing with Qui-Gon Jinn action figures and seeing advertisements for films like Unknown, so little did I know that Neeson wasn't always such a traditional action protagonist. Neeson's career over the last decade has been a peculiar mixture of supporting roles in major blockbusters like Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy and The LEGO Movie, and old-fashioned star vehicles that put him at the center of the action. Years after his performance as Oskar Schindler in Steven Spielberg's seminal classic brought him international acclaim, Neeson has reinvented his image in stunning fashion.
While the Taken trilogy (especially the horrendous third installment) deserves some of the vitriol thrown its way, Neeson's run as an icon of the action genre has been fairly consistent. Even though he's 65 years old and clearly not able to pull off the stunts anymore, Neeson's self-awareness and knack for classic thrills has created some solid films. Through his partnership with director Jaume Collet-Serra, Neeson has starred in movies like Non-Stop and Run All Night, workmanlike, incredibly entertaining projects that seem to call back to an era where special effects didn't run rampant like they do now. The Commuter is basically "What if Non-Stop but on a train?" and the results are both predictable and often quite fun. Neeson is so comfortable playing the archetypal everyman at this point that it's almost effortless, but the sense of familiarity on display in this intermittently compelling outing doesn't do it any favors. It's the quintessential January movie, but once again, Neeson and Collet-Serra get the job done.
Despite his background as a former cop on the NYPD, Michael MacCauley is a relatively average guy, just hoping to make ends meet for his family. He's a hardworking insurance salesman who genuinely wants to help people, but his biggest problem at the moment is finding the money to send his son to college. The Commuter makes it clear very early that this particular rendition of Liam Neeson is just like you and me. Michael rides a commuter train to work everyday in New York City, which is something he has done for the last decade. But this particular day turns into a bad one for him- already in a tough financial situation, Michael is let go from his job, only years away from his retirement. Unable to find the courage to tell his wife, Michael heads home feeling completely gutted.
And then his bad day gets even worse. On the train, Michael meets a mysterious woman who goes by the name of Joanna (Vera Farmiga). They make some slightly uncomfortable small talk at first, with Michael emphasizing that he's married. She tells him that she's a psychologist and proceeds to ask a hypothetical question- if I promised you $100,000 and you just had to do one little thing that would affect someone on this train, would you take the money? Michael laughs it off, but Joanna's dead-serious demeanor begins to unnerve him. And then it becomes very clear that this isn't hypothetical at all- Michael is caught in a very real conspiracy with some brutal, immediate consequences. As he searches for an enigmatic individual, the bodies begin piling up and Michael finds himself and his family in greater danger by the minute. Will he be able to save the day? If you've seen one of these movies before, you probably already know the answer.
Collet-Serra's films are practically allergic to subtlety, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. He's drawing on a tradition of bombastic old-school thrillers from masters like Hitchcock and Spielberg, and he has no problem using flashy camerawork or making unique directorial choices. He's also a fan of driving in a point, as he does in the opening 20 minutes of The Commuter. In the first act, Collet-Serra and the screenwriters (Byron Willinger, Philip de Blasi, and Ryan Engle) work hard to establish a working-class sensibility to the character of Michael MacCauley, punctuated by Neeson's initially genial performance. Neeson has always played average, salt of the earth guys in these films, but in The Commuter, the humdrum nature of his life and his constant money concerns are much more obvious. Sure, he's an ex-cop with a particular set of skills, but Michael is meant to be pretty unremarkable, the kind of person you could run into on the street. His rapport with his fellow commuters and his everyday concerns is nicely rendered, and I like that Collet-Serra tried to turn this into a bit of a class study.
Now, does the film do anything with that? Absolutely not. Michael's predicament is necessary for Joanna's proposal to work, but after that, the themes somehow become superfluous to Collet-Serra's twisty plot and explosive conclusion. Collet-Serra has drawn plenty of comparisons to Hitchcock over the years for his commitment to tense movies that are fairly small in contrast to the overblown Hollywood schlock of the modern era. And it's true, his films do share some DNA with the best of the Master of Suspense. But when push comes to shove, Collet-Serra almost always caves, delivering a preposterous action climax that feels so out of sync with what came before. Even in the terrific Non-Stop, the film couldn't resist that big, special FX-driven plane crash at the very end. As the pyrotechnics and quick cuts begin to pile up, The Commuter grows less and less compelling by the minute, devolving into something of a cinematic headache.
Which brings us to the main issue at hand- The Commuter's central mystery is both painfully predictable and sadly uninteresting. I'm not usually good at predicting where a movie is heading, but the plot "twists" in The Commuter are so incredibly obvious that I saw them from a mile away. Nonetheless, I could overlook some of the film's more predictable elements and third act follies if the narrative that came before felt involving in any significant way, but that just never happens. Instead, the plot suffers from a crippling sense of vagueness and ambiguity, dealing with a strange kind of MacGuffin and stakes that aren't immediately clear. Even when the film's main antagonist is exposed during its final moments, plenty of questions remain. The exact plot mechanics should be unimportant for a movie like this, but there's a frustrating lack of clarity to The Commuter for much of its runtime.
And yet......it's entertaining. It's a perfectly engineered antidote to the serious Oscar fare that dominates theaters around this time of year, what happens when a January movie is done (mostly) right. It lacks the precision of something like Non-Stop, and it does feel brutally familiar in the wake of that far superior film. But Neeson is as good as ever, and Collet-Serra keeps things moving with a briskness that masks some of the more preposterous elements. It doesn't amount to much, and this period in Neeson's career is clearly coming to an end, but The Commuter gets in and out with as little damage as possible. Just be prepared to have it instantly evaporate from your brain.
THE FINAL GRADE: B- (6.6/10)
While the Taken trilogy (especially the horrendous third installment) deserves some of the vitriol thrown its way, Neeson's run as an icon of the action genre has been fairly consistent. Even though he's 65 years old and clearly not able to pull off the stunts anymore, Neeson's self-awareness and knack for classic thrills has created some solid films. Through his partnership with director Jaume Collet-Serra, Neeson has starred in movies like Non-Stop and Run All Night, workmanlike, incredibly entertaining projects that seem to call back to an era where special effects didn't run rampant like they do now. The Commuter is basically "What if Non-Stop but on a train?" and the results are both predictable and often quite fun. Neeson is so comfortable playing the archetypal everyman at this point that it's almost effortless, but the sense of familiarity on display in this intermittently compelling outing doesn't do it any favors. It's the quintessential January movie, but once again, Neeson and Collet-Serra get the job done.
Despite his background as a former cop on the NYPD, Michael MacCauley is a relatively average guy, just hoping to make ends meet for his family. He's a hardworking insurance salesman who genuinely wants to help people, but his biggest problem at the moment is finding the money to send his son to college. The Commuter makes it clear very early that this particular rendition of Liam Neeson is just like you and me. Michael rides a commuter train to work everyday in New York City, which is something he has done for the last decade. But this particular day turns into a bad one for him- already in a tough financial situation, Michael is let go from his job, only years away from his retirement. Unable to find the courage to tell his wife, Michael heads home feeling completely gutted.
And then his bad day gets even worse. On the train, Michael meets a mysterious woman who goes by the name of Joanna (Vera Farmiga). They make some slightly uncomfortable small talk at first, with Michael emphasizing that he's married. She tells him that she's a psychologist and proceeds to ask a hypothetical question- if I promised you $100,000 and you just had to do one little thing that would affect someone on this train, would you take the money? Michael laughs it off, but Joanna's dead-serious demeanor begins to unnerve him. And then it becomes very clear that this isn't hypothetical at all- Michael is caught in a very real conspiracy with some brutal, immediate consequences. As he searches for an enigmatic individual, the bodies begin piling up and Michael finds himself and his family in greater danger by the minute. Will he be able to save the day? If you've seen one of these movies before, you probably already know the answer.
Collet-Serra's films are practically allergic to subtlety, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. He's drawing on a tradition of bombastic old-school thrillers from masters like Hitchcock and Spielberg, and he has no problem using flashy camerawork or making unique directorial choices. He's also a fan of driving in a point, as he does in the opening 20 minutes of The Commuter. In the first act, Collet-Serra and the screenwriters (Byron Willinger, Philip de Blasi, and Ryan Engle) work hard to establish a working-class sensibility to the character of Michael MacCauley, punctuated by Neeson's initially genial performance. Neeson has always played average, salt of the earth guys in these films, but in The Commuter, the humdrum nature of his life and his constant money concerns are much more obvious. Sure, he's an ex-cop with a particular set of skills, but Michael is meant to be pretty unremarkable, the kind of person you could run into on the street. His rapport with his fellow commuters and his everyday concerns is nicely rendered, and I like that Collet-Serra tried to turn this into a bit of a class study.
Now, does the film do anything with that? Absolutely not. Michael's predicament is necessary for Joanna's proposal to work, but after that, the themes somehow become superfluous to Collet-Serra's twisty plot and explosive conclusion. Collet-Serra has drawn plenty of comparisons to Hitchcock over the years for his commitment to tense movies that are fairly small in contrast to the overblown Hollywood schlock of the modern era. And it's true, his films do share some DNA with the best of the Master of Suspense. But when push comes to shove, Collet-Serra almost always caves, delivering a preposterous action climax that feels so out of sync with what came before. Even in the terrific Non-Stop, the film couldn't resist that big, special FX-driven plane crash at the very end. As the pyrotechnics and quick cuts begin to pile up, The Commuter grows less and less compelling by the minute, devolving into something of a cinematic headache.
Which brings us to the main issue at hand- The Commuter's central mystery is both painfully predictable and sadly uninteresting. I'm not usually good at predicting where a movie is heading, but the plot "twists" in The Commuter are so incredibly obvious that I saw them from a mile away. Nonetheless, I could overlook some of the film's more predictable elements and third act follies if the narrative that came before felt involving in any significant way, but that just never happens. Instead, the plot suffers from a crippling sense of vagueness and ambiguity, dealing with a strange kind of MacGuffin and stakes that aren't immediately clear. Even when the film's main antagonist is exposed during its final moments, plenty of questions remain. The exact plot mechanics should be unimportant for a movie like this, but there's a frustrating lack of clarity to The Commuter for much of its runtime.
And yet......it's entertaining. It's a perfectly engineered antidote to the serious Oscar fare that dominates theaters around this time of year, what happens when a January movie is done (mostly) right. It lacks the precision of something like Non-Stop, and it does feel brutally familiar in the wake of that far superior film. But Neeson is as good as ever, and Collet-Serra keeps things moving with a briskness that masks some of the more preposterous elements. It doesn't amount to much, and this period in Neeson's career is clearly coming to an end, but The Commuter gets in and out with as little damage as possible. Just be prepared to have it instantly evaporate from your brain.
THE FINAL GRADE: B- (6.6/10)
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