The Commuter Review by Chris Hembury

The Commuter ***

Liam Neeson reunites with action director Jaume Collet-Serra after working together on Unknown, Non-Stop, Run All Night now comes there latest Thriller (and Neeson's rumoured last action film) The Commuter.

The story unfolds as Neeson plays the Insurance Salesman who on his daily commute home on the train is approached by a mysterious stranger (Vera Farmiga, Conjuring fame) to find a particular passenger who "doesn't belong" and he will get $100,000 in return. Shortly here after his life spirals into a chaos that makes Northern Rail look phenomenal.

The two most successful parts of this production are the leading actor and the director. They know there stuff and smash the Action genre with great success. Neeson embraces the genre with ease, reliability and hops, skips and jumps (in some scenes really far) his way through the narrative that in recent years has given him such a successful platform.

The Director strives to be as creative as possible instantly proving the trapped location of the train is no trap for his creative visual style creating cool SFX shots that keep the plot rolling with speed. Particular fun is shown taken setting the stage in the opening credits fast cutting his daily commute with footage of the hundreds of times his carried out this routine, with fast cutting and shot merges we learn allot fast, kicking us into the set stage.

The let down really is the script that feels particularly rushed, what could have been a wicked Hitchcockian adventure like The Lady Vanishes on acid is replaced with a almost half thought out scenerio that needs much more time in the creative oven to have been developed.

Great talented cast additions like Jonathan Banks (Breaking Bad) and Sam Niel (Jurassic Park) are given very little to do and their skills as actors are not rewarded by great dialogue either both have pretty unexciting lines to phone in.

If you can ignore weak plotting, logic and an almost shameful recreation of the ending of Non Stop at the airport you are still left with a entertaining action thriller that has clear stand out moments of suburb action from a extreamly original guitar knife fight to a cripping train crash if you let great actor/director go for it they deliver the goods. And if you had delivered them a better script I think they really could have raised the bar. In pun terms this train ride could easily have been upgraded to first class.

Popcorn Thriller with some funny lines, good action and not so twisty plot.