Review: The Commuter

Image courtesy of Lionsgate.

It's winter, which means that it's about that time for another thriller directed by Jaume Collet-Sera and featuring Liam Neeson as an unlikely action star and everyman with a past caught up in dangerous circumstances.

Nearly every winter for the past however many years has seen entries into the Neeson action hero saga, starting with "Taken" and including two sequels to that film, 2011's "Unknown," 2014's "Non-Stop" and 2015's "Run All Night."

In this latest entry, Neeson plays Michael McCauley, a former cop turned businessman who is having one of those days. McCauley is laid off from the life insurance firm at which he works at the film's beginning and within moments of getting onto a New York City subway, he is pickpocketed - for the record, I've lived in New York for 15 years and have never known anyone who has been pickpocketed, at least, not in the melodramatic fashion in which it occurs in this film.

Once he is onboard a Long Island Rail Road train and headed for home, McCauley is approached by a mysterious woman (Vera Farmiga), who pretends to be some sort of psychologist and poses what appears to be a rhetorical question as to whether McCauley would accept money in exchange for "one small thing," a seemingly easy task that could affect the life of another person on the train.

When McCauley realizes that the question is not rhetorical and has accepted the money, he finds himself involved in a labyrinthine, Hitchcockian scenario in which he must locate someone onboard the train who is holding onto a piece of valuable information on which some very bad people want to get their hands. McCauley must decide whether he wants to remain involved in the scenario - of course, his son is about to start college and he could really use the money. As time goes on, he realizes that he has no choice, but to remain involved (I mean, seriously, how many films can there be in which Liam Neeson's family is threatened?).

"The Commuter" is fairly entertaining as McCauley begins to put the pieces together regarding the film's central mystery. It is also completely preposterous, bordering on ludicrous. Neeson, as always, is pretty game and appears always to be on the verge of cracking a knowing smile that the material with which he is working is that of a B-grade thriller. But there are a few set pieces that are fairly well handled and the picture moves along at a brisk pace. In other words, it's entertaining enough, but pretty silly. Whether you'll consider this an endorsement is on you.