The Commuter (2018)

(Netflix Streaming, September 2019) The first thing that comes to mind while analyzing The Commuter is the brazenness with which both lead actors Liam Neeson and director Jaume Collet-Serra boldly recycle the bare bones of one of their previous collaborations. As with the earlier Non-Stop, here we have a disgraced cop being manipulated in finding an unknown person aboard a closed transportation vehicle. It was a plane in the first film, it’s a commuter train heading out of Manhattan in The Commuter. This being the latest in a surprisingly long-running series of action movies starring Neeson, we already know the broad outlines of the plot. Of course, this is all a big conspiracy. Of course, he’s being framed. Of course, it’s going to go from one suspense set-piece to another. Of course, we’re going to stay on the train until the bitter end. Still, even with this heavy set of baggage and expectations, I ended up enjoying The Commuter far more than I thought I would. A little bit of this is due to (still) liking Neeson as an actor. A little bit is due to being sympathetic to Collet-Serra’s directorial style (although he’s noticeably less ambitious and/or crazy in his choices here). More than a little bit of it is due to my unexplainable fascination for the Manhattan commuter lifestyle (I blame Mad Men). And most of it is due to my own fondness for high-concept action thrillers, of which The Commuter definitely is. The film has fun playing with red herrings, audience expectations and a fairly large cast of characters. I can’t say that there are major surprises here despite the red herrings—for all of the minor plot twists and the spectacular crash at the end of the second act rather than the end of the film, we know that you don’t simply use actors such as Sam Neill and Patrick Wilson in small roles without bringing them back in a significant capacity at the end. Still, it’s well-handled, effective when it needs to be, and it feels as if it systematically exhausts all of the dramatic possibilities of its setting—a very favourable thing in my own playbook. Despite reaching retirement age, Neeson is absolutely rock-solid in the lead and that does help the film gain a credibility that it would have struggled to reach with another actor in the lead. While the result isn’t earth-shattering, The Commuter does work as an exemplary thriller and that’s quite enough.