Directed by: Jaume Collet-Serra
Starring: Liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Sam Neill, Elizabeth McGovern, Jonathan Banks
Here is another entry in the Liam Neeson kicks somebody's ass sweepstakes. It started with Taken and has continued on like the speeding commuter train in The Commuter, which throws Neeson into the middle of an overly complicated plot hatched by villains who should know better. Any baddie worth his salt should have realized his plot is riddled with needless complications. If you are able to hack into cell phones, be omnipotent, and otherwise control everything down to the last detail, why would you throw a wild card into the mix like Neeson, who could easily disrupt everything? If you seemingly can be everywhere, then how could you not know the identity of the person you are trying to kill? Why do you want Neeson, who knows nothing about your plot, to do it for you? Why? Why? Why? I asked that question a lot, and that is usually fatal to the enjoyment of escapist entertainment like The Commuter.
Neeson is Mike McCauley, a sixty-year-old ex-cop turned life insurance salesman with money troubles, made worse by being let go from his job after ten years. He has a son going off to college and an otherwise loving home life, so he would be the least appetizing candidate for the plot which is about to be foisted on him. Aboard the NYC commuter train, he meets a mysterious woman named Joanna (Farmiga), who presents him with a deal. For $100,000, all he needs to do is track down someone on the bus who goes by the name Prynne (which should ring a bell to those who read The Scarlet Letter) and place a tracking device on his/her bag, setting up the person for certain doom. Joanna doesn't give many clues, except that the person "doesn't belong and is carrying something in his or her bag". Mike, desperate for money, tries to locate the person before the person is scheduled to get off at the final stop. He deduces quickly, though not quickly enough, that the person he is trying to find is earmarked for a bad ending and then he hopes to stop the plot instead.
You know the ex-cop portion of Mike's resume will come into play, as he goes mano y mano with other villains (or red herrings) on the train. You would also think other passengers would be scared off by the sound of shots being fired or two guys fighting all over the seemingly mile-long train. Nope. They don't even notice. The other passengers and staff helpfully stay away while Mike does his thing. You would also think the idea of Mike harassing other passengers would raise a red flag. Nope. Not even that. The plotters really left a lot up to chance here. If they know the passenger is getting off on the last stop, can't they deduce for themselves who they are targeting and just send someone on the train to get rid of Prynne? Wouldn't that draw less attention than having the tall and lumbering Neeson wreaking havoc and arousing suspicion all over the train? How did the plotters even find out about the existence of Prynne in the first place?
Neeson is self-assured and dependable in these action roles which have filled up his filmography lately. I don't know if being an ex-cop necessarily qualifies you to hold your own in a fistfight with professional hitmen, but we are willing to suspend our disbelief at least on that. The Commuter follows the laws and cliches of such films in lockstep, including the fact that characters introduced in the opening scenes will surely play a part in the finale. Neeson doesn't have to really do much characterization. We know him from other movies of this ilk, so we know what he is and what he is all about. The original Taken was intense fun; the sequels were ridiculous howlers. Non-Stop was silly, but still engaging, and now we have The Commuter, which topples under the weight of its plot holes. Neeson does this sort of role well, but we know he is capable of so much more. It is a blessing Neeson found these roles later in his career than earlier, otherwise Oskar Schindler would have turned the Nazis into punching bags.
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