If you watched a trailer, looked at a poster, read a
description, or have any experience at all with Jaume Collet-Serra and Liam
Neeson’s previous team ups, Non-Stop, Unknown,
and Run All Night, their latest tag team, The
Commuter, delivers precisely the movie it promises. It’s like a
dumbed-down, idiot Strangers on a Train. There’s mystery,
one-shot fight scenes, Liam Neeson kicking ass, and it’s as pointless and
forgettable as it is goofily entertaining.
Ex-cop turned life insurance shill, Michael MacCauley
(Neeson), rides the same commuter train into New York City every morning, just
like he has for the previous ten years. On this particular day he’s 1) laid off
by a generic corporate stooge; 2) has drinks with his former cop partner
(Patrick Wilson) and sees his former cop boss (Sam Neill); and 3) meets a
mysterious woman (Vera Farmiga) on the train back home, who offers him $100K to
do something one thing, find the person on the train who doesn’t belong.
Simple, easy for a former cop, and it will solve all his
money woes—of course his idyllic life is beset by money woes. This kicks off an
escalating series of events and mysteries to untangle that ultimately hits
ludicrous high notes and reminds us that we should never, ever talk to
strangers, especially on a train.
Collet-Serra sets the stage in what’s a legitimately
fantastic opening montage. In a spiraling sequence of quick edits and match
cuts, we see Michael start his day, his every day. The one-day-is-the-same-as-the-next
staging drives home the Groundhog’s Day nature of a regular
morning commute—as someone who has a regular routine and commute, and can tell
exactly where he is along the path by what’s on the radio at any given moment,
this adds an authentic touch. Over the years, he’s made friends and
acquaintance on the train, knows the workers, and has a familiarity with the
faces he sees every day. Commuters form own little community rolling down the
tracks.
This scene not only lays the groundwork for what comes next,
it shows us a quick cross-section of his daily life, family struggles, routine,
and more. It’s a clever, effective way to begin, introduces all the key
information with a minimum of fuss, and nothing that follows quite lives up to
that.
And what does follow is a paint-by-numbers mystery thriller.
It hits all the typical notes and plays like Hitchcock-lite. Michael strolls up
and down the aisle, piecing together clues, jumping to wrong-headed
conclusions, gradually learning the true stakes and discovering he’s in way
over his head. It’s fine, and it accomplishes precisely what it sets out to do,
but it’s never particularly tense. Instead of the mystery propelling the
narrative forward, the pace meanders around as we watch Liam Neeson go through
the motions.
After reinventing his career with a slew of
Taken movies and similar projects—his work with Collet-Serra
certainly falls into this category—Neeson can do this in his sleep. He’s
passable, but doesn’t offer much of any interest. The same can be said of
Farmiga, who’s shadowy external motivation of a character only shows up in the
movie for a few moments. Both Wilson and Neill are completely wasted, as is
Breaking Bad favorite Jonathan Banks.
The Commuters isn’t groundbreaking, but
no one really makes this type of mid-level, mid-budget action thriller anymore.
If they do, it generally goes direct to video. Neeson has the unique ability to
get these films traction, adding an air of class and distinction, even though
he’s turned this particular niche into a veritable cottage industry. And
teaming up with Collet-Serra has provided substantial
results—Unknown and Non-Stop are fun in
that way that you’ll watch and enjoy when you stumble across them on cable one
rainy Saturday afternoon and nothing better happens to be on, but Run All Night is a solid movie IMO.
What The Commuter does have going for it,
however, is a willingness to, once things get to a certain point, push past the
bounds of logic and reason and take the action to silly, destructive spectacle
levels. It’s a manic tendency, and one I can wholly get behind. The film
steadfastly refuses to end, and though it’s overlong by 20 minutes or so, if
you have the patience to get to the final act, the script from Byron Williger,
Philip de Blasi, and Ryan Engle just throws up its hands and rewards the
audience with a nice touch of crazy.
Just know, at one point, Liam Neeson pummels a dude with a
guitar. And mid-way through, there’s a vicious, long—like They
Live long—hand-to-hand fight scene that shows the potential
Collet-Serra has as an action filmmaker. But too often he relies on CGI
trickery—did we really need a shot of the camera pulling back through every
pixelated train car?—and big set pieces he doesn’t have the resources to
execute properly. It’s like he wants to go big and grand, summer blockbuster
style, but his particular set of skills is best suited to grittier action fare.
Still, know The Commuter delivers what it
advertises, with a nutty, excessive action cherry on top at the end. It’s not
trying to be anything it isn’t; it’s a straightforward, stripped-down thriller
with no pretense to artistry or ambition to rewrite genre conventions. It even
wraps up with a tidy little bow so we never have to think about it again. In
that way, it’s almost refreshing.
There are much better movies that more or less do the same
thing, and while it’s not a fully satisfying meal, if you’re in the mood for
the cinematic equivalent of a salty snack full of empty calories, you can do
worse than The Commuter. [Grade: C+]
No comments:
Post a Comment