The Commuter (2018)
Directed by Jaume Collet Serra
Written by Byron Willinger, Phillip de Blasi, Ryan Engle
Starring Liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Jonathan Banks, Sam Neil
Release Date January 12th, 2018
The Commuter is yet another desperately silly effort from Liam Neeson. Once again teaming with director Jaume Collet Serra, Neeson is once again playing an action hero in a desperate situation in which life and death hang in the balance. At this point, a trip to the grocery store could be the premise for a Neeson action hero; it’s not as if he needs anything more than a place, a gun and an elaborate idiot plot for his Mad Libs take on the action genre.
In The Commuter, Liam Neeson stars as Michael, an Insurance Agent and former cop who takes the train to the city every day. Michael’s life is changed forever when he loses his job and on his commuter train home he is approached by an odd but attractive woman named Joanna (Vera Farmiga) who makes a unique proposition. Joanna wants Michael to use his knowledge of the regular riders on the train to find the one person who doesn’t belong.
This person is carrying a bag and Michael is to tag the bag with a GPS tracker. In exchange for doing this, Michael will receive $25,000 waiting for him hidden on the train and another $75,000 after he gets the job done. Michael is dubious until he finds the initial payment and decides to do the job. Naturally, nothing is as it appears. When Michael tries to back out of the deal he gets a message that his family is in danger and he is forced to continue.
I mentioned Mad Libs earlier and admittedly that is a shallow and glib interpretation. That said, we’ve seen Liam Neeson play a very similar character as this one only on a plane in Non-Stop. In that film, Neeson played an innocent man who was being framed for taking over a plane. Here, Neeson’s Michael is being framed for taking over a commuter train so as glib as the Mad Libs comparison is, it’s not exactly off-base.
Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal
