Does Liam Neeson suffer from problems with unfamiliarity or something? I mean, we all like a daily routine, but by 2018 it really did seem that the aging action hero had taken his comfort levels to the extreme. The offending party was The Commuter, an action-thriller that contained so many familiar Neeson-isms, if often felt less like a stand-alone movie and more like some sort of weird victory lap that combined many of Liam’s recognised tropes that had been in regular rotation since 2008’s Taken.
For a start, at some point during the film we discover that Neeson’s family is apparently in danger – which obviously is the number-one trigger from a guy who brawled, shot and tortured his way through three Taken movies. But in addition to this, he’s also trapped on a mode of transport much like 2014’s Non-Stop and has no idea who to trust – which is also the plot of that movie and 2011’s Unknown too. But just in case things weren’t overfamiliar enough, the director of The Commuter was Jaume Collet-Serra, who had directed Neeson before in both Unknown, Non-Stop and Run All Night – which also saw Liam’s family in danger (phew). Could such a ridiculously derivative movie possibly stand on its own two feet, or was it always destined to fly off the rails?
We find Neeson in sad-sack mode once again as he plays Michael MacCauley, an ex-NYPD officer who now sells insurance. Every day he takes the same train to work and back, not thinking much about the various passengers around him as he supports his loving family; but one day he finds that his routine is severely hampered when he’s suddenly fired from his job completely out of the blue. Unable to face his family in the wake of his dismissal, he boards his usual train with no idea what he’s going to do next – however, it’s here where a second strange event throws off his entire existence.
Approached by a strange women named Joanna, who offers him a hypothetical situation to mull over. She asks that if he were to be paid a substantial fee, would he be able to locate a passenger on the train before a certain stop with virtually nothing to go on but the name “Prynne”? Matthew seems amused by the question, but soon finds that Joanna wasn’t being as hypothetical as he first thought when he discovers a sizable wad of cash meant for him in the bathroom. Soon, the ex-cop has found himself in the midst of a full-blown conspiracy as the stakes steadily rise with the appearance of the dead body of a FBI agent and the news that whomever Matthew fingers as “Prynne” will promptly meet the same end.
As the train gets ever closer to that fateful stop, Matthew has to sort his way through carriage after carriage of vaguely familiar faces to discover his quarry. But even if he finds this person, can he just give them over to be killed in cold blood?
As you could probably tell from my intro, the sheer amount of recognisable Liam Neeson tropes unavoidably leads you to believe that the fourth collaboration between the actor and Jaume Collet-Serra has potential to be the most predictable and derivative movie you’ve ever seen. However, while a lot of the film is incredibly similar to action romps from Neeson’s past, it actually stands as one of the better of the bunch thanks to an amusing quirk of fate. It seems that after making three thrillers which left the actor dazed and confused as to who to trust, Collet-Serra seems to be willing to throw restraint onto the tracks and crush it under the wheels of a speeding locomotive. While I would hardly call the previous collaborations an ode to realism, even by the ludicrous standards of Non-Stop (which saw Neeson shoot a man dead despite dealing with a sudden attack of zero-gravity), The Commuter seems to be having fun at the expense of all forms of common sense.
Thanks to him playing the role of a grizzled savior for around ten years at this point, Neeson slides into this latest role like it’s a pair of exceedingly battered slippers as he lopes up and down an entire train looking progressively more worried. However, you can tell that Collet-Serra has been keeping a cheeky ear out for the various complaints that’s been leveled at Neeson’s action era and takes steps to change things up. For example, one of the major issues people tend to pick up on is the fact that Neeson’s fight scenes tended to be broken up into an endless string of edits used to cover the fact that Liam’s getting on a bit – and yet Collet-Serra delivers a fight sequence that (thanks to a bunch of digitally hidden edits) looks like it’s one long brawl rather a lightning quick jigsaw puzzle of shots. Another witty change the film makes is that it takes that notion of the mysterious, Hitchcockian female beyond that seen in Unknown’s January Jones and Jullianne Moore’s walking red herring from Non-Stop and gives us Vera Farmiga’s smug puppet master – who strangely feels like a villainous version of her role in Source Code (another train-set thriller).
From here, the usual conspiracy theory rules are dutifully laid out (trust no-one, ticking clock) and it helps that The Commuter has a rather familiar set of passengers to share its journey with. For a start, Sam Neill’s Captain and Patrick Wilson’s cop buddy provide drama and support off the train, but it’s also fun to spot some various, familiar faces such as a goth Florence Pugh, “Wuthering Heights” Shazad Latif as a douchebag banker and even Breaking Bad’s Jonathan Banks. However, while it’s always enjoyable watching the lead of a conspiracy thriller trying to bond or brawl with the various onlookers who may be in on it, where the film will really grab you or lose you is when Collet-Serra turns the action up to eleven. I personally was very entertained by the lengths the movie goes to to put MacCauley in danger, such as nearly falling out of the bottom of the train while hiding with a corpse (sure, we’ve all done it). In fact, the huge, Super 8-sized train crash that occurs during the final third that flips carriages like dominoes, seems less like a “simple” action sequence and more like a belated statement of intent that seems to be saying “See? SEE? Look how ridiculous this all is!”. Well, it may be silly, but it’s also a lot of fun if you don’t want to take things too seriously, and even after we get massively scaled destruction near the end of our conspiracy thriller, the film even takes some time to throw in a quick police siege before the end credits roll. If you’re looking for a subtle, sweat inducing thriller, the sight of a sweaty, bug-eyed, Liam Neeson battering a would-be assasin with an electric guitar may not be what you want out this film. But for a big, bold, brassy close to the Neeson/Collet-Serra era, it moves like an express train – a really, really dumb one.
Being undoubtedly the most fun of Collet-Serra’s Liam Neeson vehicles means that The Commuter is arguably the best of the quartet of truth warping thrillers that the two collaborated on. When it comes to staying power, it’ll blow right out of your memory station without a second thought, but while it’s playing, the filmmakers ensure it stays on the right track.
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