The Commuter

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. (07/02/2018)

Let me put it mildly and say that the filmmakers didn't do a very good job of making the film. I’ll keep all the curse words to myself. I've never had anything against Liam Neeson. I was there with him when he was rescuing his daughter and wife, or walking over tombstones, and I’ve always been quite satisfied, but I shouldn't have gotten on that train with him. I think an honest tagline for this film could be: How an Aging Insurance Guy Gets Lucky. At least that would have been a red flag for me. Liam Neeson really wasn't up to the role, the plot was stupid and predictable, the ending was incredibly dumb, and I didn’t enjoy this at all. I'm giving it two stars because no trains were harmed during the making of the film. (23/06/2018)

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. (26/07/2018)

Liam Neeson and Jaume Collet-Serra have met on the screen for the fourth time already and yet again, I can’t get enough of it. A perfect small-scale film with an inventive script that uses a train the good old Agatha Christie way and offers a gripping plot with a solid unravelling. And since Liam is a champ for his age and Jaume can work well with CGI, you’re up for a rollercoaster full of adrenaline. It might reek of special effects, but I didn’t mind that one bit. Great camera angles brilliantly capture the action scenes and doesn’t start shaking as soon as Liam look at it the wrong way. It created so much adrenaline that it was hard for me to lower my blood pressure back to normal after watching the movie. (13/09/2018)

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% (08/02/2018)