The Commuter

This is already the fourth collaboration between Liam Neeson and Jaume Collet-Serra (which had previously worked flawlessly), but it didn’t turn out as I had hoped. I didn’t let the mixed reviews sway me, but the result was not particularly impressive. The idea with the train is fine; the first half can be considered successful, with the viewer unsure of what might happen, and Neeson still manages to convey his worried expression of a man whose wife and son have been abducted. But then, what I feared happened. It turned into a bit of a farce, with logic going out the window, and the plot kept twisting in various directions. I wouldn’t have minded that if it had been presented more reasonably and slowly, allowing the viewer to keep up. Even the fights didn’t manage to save it in the end, which I don’t understand at all. They felt very staged, lacking realism. And the final scene with the train derailment? The digital effects didn’t come across as well as they probably intended. The minor plot twist at the end could have been predicted an hour earlier. I don’t mind happy endings, but here it was over the top. Next time, I’d prefer a proper thriller that plays with suspense rather than a digital train and a convoluted story. I give it 56%. (2018-06-02)

Liam Neeson gets on the train in a pretty bad mood, and it's about to get worse when he finds out that Vera Farmiga has manipulated him into a conspiracy in which his neck is on the line. And not just him. The Commuter is a solid action flick, and exactly what you'd expect from the makers of Unknown and Non-Stop. But you can tell they're running out of ideas. It still paces pretty well and you get exactly what you expect in the cinema, but not a tad more. I quite enjoyed it, but I would have liked to see Neeson and director Jaume Collet-Serra move on to other projects and maybe even genres. They don't have much to offer here anymore. (2018-07-26)

Liam Neeson is still badass, but in Commuter he looks like he’s tired of that. His hero has adapted a bit to the situation, he is no longer the unwavering killing machine he was in Taken, but a panting 60 year old son of a bitch who can hardly make it to the wild, digital finale. The finale of an action thriller that is cruelly predictable with its last twist, but nevertheless has some decent pacing and one or two really dramatic and imaginative scenes. Jaume Collet-Serra is still doing his thing and holds the trilogy to a higher standard than Liam did in, say, the severely degraded Taken trilogy. Still, it's quite a lot for the third time, and while it manages to build up tension from the edge and Vera Farmiga seems like an apparition from another planet in those femme fatale 5 minutes, by the second half it’s already running on fumes. Towards the end, only those seemingly inconspicuous characters obediently squeak onto the stage to break up the screenwriter's misery. It is watchable, because the train setting is attractive – Steven Seagal could tell you a thing or two about it. (2018-02-15)

The Commuter is a surprisingly bad thriller (considering it promised to be the next Non-Stop), where not only is there no consistent story logic, but the fights are very digital and unrealistic, which is unacceptable in today’s filmmaking. It doesn’t work even as an entertaining genre movie, as the only things worth mentioning here are Liam Neeson and a casting inside joke for movie geeks in the form of Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga from the Conjuring series. (2018-02-07)

The standard Liam Neeson reunites with director Jaume Collet-Serra in a suspenseful thriller that is fun to watch but unfortunately doesn't bring much new to the table. It bothers me a bit that every new Liam film, is actually exactly the same as the previous one. Non-Stop was set on a plane, The Commuter takes place on a train, and the plot is more or less similar, except that I found Non-Stop more entertaining and its denouement more surprising, whereas here I found out all too soon. Too many similarities for my taste, as if they didn't know how to handle the script. That said, the train derailment is solid and Liam still manages the smaller fights, so it's still above average, but it could have been more creative. 70% (2018-02-08)