By Marc S. Sanders
Sometimes it gets boring to have your suspension of disbelief tested with a movie. Especially if it is a movie where there’s that eye in the sky that can see everything the hero does, thereby making his dilemma that much harder. Downright impossible, actually.
You know what I mean when I say eye in the sky? That’s where the villain or the antagonist can see everything the hero attempts to do to save the day, and every time he tries something like making a cell phone call or writing a secret message on a piece of paper (hidden next to his thigh under the table) for someone else to see, the bad guy always knows what he’s doing. It’s a wonder if the protagonist can even take a leak in private.
In The Commuter, Liam Neeson plays a former New York cop, now insurance salesman, who takes his morning and afternoon train from upstate into the city and then back after work. Everyday, it’s the same regulars on the train while Neeson’s character, Michael MacCauley, reads the classic literature books that his son is assigned to cover for school. I guess it’s the way they bond, and it’s pretty fortunate that this is Mike’s hobby because on the day he gets fired from his job, it might come in handy. Go figure. These bad guys messed with the wrong avid reader. I mean he’s reading The Grapes Of Wrath for heaven’s sake.
Just before Mike enters the train, his wallet and cell phone are pickpocketed. He defeatedly slumps down in his seat and shortly after an alluring woman named Joanna played by Vera Farmiga sits across from him and proposes a hypothetical. Find twenty-five thousand in cash hidden somewhere in the bathroom. Then seek out a passenger who identifies as Prynne and swipe the bag that person is holding. Once that is done, he’ll collect an additional seventy-five thousand, but it must be done before the train reaches the Cold Spring station. Joanna leaves the train making the offer sound so simple.
Considering Mike just lost his job and he’s got no cash savings as well as his son’s college tuition to pay for, he retrieves the hidden money and tries to make a clean getaway at the next stop. However, he’s immediately halted by someone who gives him an envelope with his wife’s wedding ring in it. Now, he knows this woman and whoever else is setting him up with his wife and son in possible danger.
As he finds a way to communicate with Joanna by phone, Mike tests just how serious she and her cohorts are, and that’s when a couple of people wind up dead. Ultimately, the only way out of this conundrum is for Mike to find out which passenger is Prynne.
Much of the running time of The Commuter is occupied with red herrings. Could Prynne be the punk girl with the nose ring (Florence Pugh)? Is it the asshole Investment Banker with the phone earpiece? Maybe it’s the guy all dressed in black? Or the one with the guitar case? Yeah. It could be any one of these folks who Mike does not recognize as regular travelers. I won’t even tell you if any of the people are the real Prynne or not, but I knew what to expect from this kind of storytelling pattern. Mike finds a way to small talk some of them and seek out clues. He uses the conductors by explaining that he sees something suspicious and suggests they look in their parcels. At times, I felt like I was playing the Clue or Guess Who? or Twenty Questions. I dunno. This kind of set up for a movie just seems too silly.
Sixty-year-old Mike also engages in hand-to-hand fist fights with some suspects. I don’t know how old Liam Neeson is, but Mike says he’s sixty, and sixty-year-old Mike endures getting his head bashed through more than one speeding train window, plus a couple of knife slashes and some ass kickings, in his pursuit for the truth. I know. He’s a cop so he’s got fighting skills. That’s okay. I buy that, but to have your head bashed through doubled paned windows while this commuter train is going a hundred miles an hour? Well, that’s enough stretching for one day.
So how does Joanna stay one step ahead of Mike to ensure he’s playing by the rules? Well, apparently there are cameras positioned in the overhead vents of every train car that can follow his every move. C’mon now! I’d rather the writers and director simply turn this into a sci fi cheapo and declare the villain omnipotent. This train is at least six cars long. Maybe seven, and the length of each one is maybe five yards if I’m being conservative, and I’m supposed to believe that these cameras cover every nook and cranny of every single train car? Seriously, stop stretching. You’re bound to pull something.
I stayed with The Commuter until the end because frankly I was curious who Prynne turned out to be and what the significance of this particular passenger was to the interests of Joanna. It actually works. It’s Mike’s convenience in detective work and the powers operating against him that’s ridiculous.
Moreover, the visuals are incredibly distracting in this picture. The CGI could not be more apparent anytime Liam Neeson throws a punch or takes one across the chin or out a broken window. The animation of the CGI appears terribly false. It looks unfinished and rushed for editing as Neeson’s facial expressions of pain and struggle contort in odd ways. The bad guys he gets into fisticuffs with appear to have the same problem. Truly some of the worst action scenes I can remember watching in quite some time.
The speed of the train looks false as well. I read where Liam Neeson said that the settings within the train cars were shot on a soundstage. Afterwards, director Juame Collet-Serra was challenged with changing the outdoor scenery of the train on a constant basis to simulate ongoing speed and movement. I imagine this is all incredibly challenging. I don’t know how to do it. However, it just does not work.
The visuals for most of The Commuter fail tremendously. Last year’s most recent installment of Mission: Impossible demonstrated how a speeding train should look in an action picture. With this movie though, the finalized print was rushed for that all so busy January release in 2018. Look, if you can’t do it right, then let somebody else handle the job, or better yet, make a better movie.
The Commuter would have been a much better and much shorter film had Mike never let his curiosity overtake him and go to the bathroom for that money. Mike, why couldn’t you just stay in your seat and finish reading your Steinbeck?
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 