- UK release: January 2018
- Director: Jaume Collet-Serra · Writers: Byron Willinger, Philip de Blasi, Ryan Engle
- Studio / distributor: StudioCanal; Lionsgate; The Picture Company
- Genre: Action thriller / conspiracy thriller · Runtime: 105 minutes (BBFC 15)
- Main cast: Liam Neeson (Taken, Schindler’s List) as Michael MacCauley; Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air, The Departed) as Joanna; Patrick Wilson (Watchmen, Little Children) as Alex Murphy; Jonathan Banks (Breaking Bad) as Walt
- IMDb: 6.3 / 10 · Rotten Tomatoes: 56% critics / 40% audience · My rating: 7.5 / 10
This is the fourth time Liam Neeson and Jaume Collet-Serra have made a film together, and by now the partnership has the comfortable rhythm of a house band. Unknown, Non-Stop and Run All Night established the template: take a sturdy, weathered Neeson, drop him into a confined or hostile space, and let his particular brand of growling competence carry a plot that would collapse if you poked it. The Commuter is the train one, the obvious companion piece to Non-Stop’s aeroplane, and it knows exactly what it is. The pleasure on offer is watching a known set of tools used well, not watching anyone reinvent them.
The setup
Michael MacCauley (Liam Neeson) is a former New York cop turned insurance salesman, sixty years old, mortgaged to the hilt, and making the same Hudson Line commute he has made for a decade. On the day he loses his job, a stranger named Joanna (Vera Farmiga) sits down opposite him and lays out a hypothetical that is not hypothetical at all: there is a passenger on this train who does not belong, find them before the last stop, and a great deal of money is his. The catch arrives quickly, the stakes turn personal, and the carriage that was MacCauley’s daily boredom becomes a moving box he cannot get out of. The film keeps its cards close, and so will I, beyond saying that the people behind Joanna’s voice are better resourced than one commuter can easily fight.
The cast
Neeson at this point could play this role in his sleep, and the interesting thing is that he does not. There is a real weariness he brings to MacCauley, a man whose body is starting to write cheques his pride keeps cashing, and the film is smart enough to let the fights cost him something. Vera Farmiga does a lot with very little screen time, most of it spent as a calm voice and a watchful face, turning exposition into menace. Patrick Wilson lends solid support as MacCauley’s old police partner, and Jonathan Banks brings his familiar flinty presence to a train regular, though both are used more as pieces on the board than as characters. The ensemble of passengers exists chiefly to be suspected in turn, which is the genre working as designed.
The craft
Collet-Serra is a more stylish director than the brief tends to suggest, and The Commuter is full of show-off touches: gliding camera moves that stitch the length of a carriage into one unbroken take, a clever early montage that compresses ten years of identical mornings, and one extended fight along a moving train that is staged with real geographic clarity. Paul Cameron’s photography keeps the cramped space legible, and Roque Banos scores it with the kind of propulsive, ticking urgency that papers over the moments when logic thins out. At 105 minutes it does not outstay its welcome. The third act asks more of your goodwill than the first two, and the digital effects in the bigger set pieces are the weakest thing on screen, but the momentum rarely stalls.
How it stacks up
The obvious comparison is Non-Stop, and The Commuter is the slightly lesser twin: the aeroplane film had a tighter mystery and a meaner edge. Reach wider and you find the train thriller’s long pedigree, from The Taking of Pelham One Two Three to Source Code, films that understand a moving carriage is a gift to a screenwriter because nobody can simply walk away. The Commuter is not as ingenious as Source Code or as gritty as the 1974 Pelham, but it sits respectably in that company, working the same confined-space tension with a star who anchors it. It is Unknown with a season ticket, and that is meant as a compliment.
Critics versus the rest of us
Critics have landed on it as competent and forgettable, around 56% on the Tomatometer, with the recurring note that the Neeson formula is wearing thin. Audiences have been harsher, down at 40%, which feels like a reaction against the increasingly silly final stretch more than the film as a whole. I think both are marking it against the wrong yardstick. Held up as a piece of original cinema it is unremarkable. Judged as a January action thriller built to entertain a Friday-night crowd for an hour and three quarters, it does the job with more craft and conviction than its reputation allows.
Verdict
This is comfort food, and I mean that without apology. The plot creaks, the resolution stretches plausibility past breaking, and you will see one or two turns coming. None of that stops it being a brisk, well-made, genuinely tense ride with a leading man who still sells every blow and every bluff. I value rewatchability and a thriller that respects the clock, and on both counts this delivers: it is exactly the kind of film I would happily put on again on a wet afternoon without checking the time. It is better than the consensus, if not by a landslide. 7.5⁄10.
Availability: In UK cinemas now, on general release from StudioCanal. One for the big screen if you want the train sequences to land, though it will lose little on the sofa when it reaches disc later in the year.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: The Commuter turned out to be the last of the Neeson and Collet-Serra collaborations to date, closing a run of four that had quietly become one of the more reliable star-and-director pairings in mid-budget action. The Neeson late-career thriller has only multiplied since, and viewed against the thinner entries that followed, this one holds up as one of the better-made examples of the type. It is now widely available on disc and digital, and turns up regularly on streaming services in the UK depending on the season.
BBFC content advice
Rated 15 by the BBFC for strong violence, injury detail. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: Scenes of strong violence include extended sequences of hand-to-hand combat featuring heavy punches and kicks delivered to faces and bodies. In one scene a man stabs another man with a knife.
Injury detail: In one scene a dead body is discovered with bloody facial injuries.
Additional issues: There is infrequent strong language (‘f**k’). There are references to a man ending his life, though this is not shown. There is a sense of moderate threat throughout.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
