Film of the Week: The Commuter

Some people have compared this to Taken on a train. I can see the similarities, but they’re subtle enough to not really be comparable to Taken. I see The Commuter as a simple action thriller that allows us to focus on it all instead of having so many elements it’s hard to really take it all in properly during the first viewing.

The film sets up Liam Neeson’s character well, by exploring his day to day routine over the course of ten years, working at an insurance company, providing for his family, watching his son grow up. Then, one day, he’s fired, for no reasonable explanation. Now on this particularly depressing train trip home, he’s faced with the task of having to tell his wife and son that he no longer has a job. But that’s not the most difficult task he’ll be facing today. A mysterious woman sits across from him, proposes a “hypothetical” question and then disappears.

This question turns out to be a true scenario, and it’s for a reward as well, one that he takes up, and discovers he gotten himself into something he shouldn’t have. The woman phones him up, lets him know what to do and what not to do, proves a point, and then makes the stakes higher by threatening his wife and son.

That element of the film, I can see bears some similarity with Taken, as it does involve his family, but they’re not really Taken in any sense of the word. They’re just threatened. He doesn’t know what’s happening and so therefore has to carry out the task given.

The entire film is set on a train, and ends in only one carriage. With the set being simplistic, the characters not plentiful, I was able to focus on the story and the main character, and those people so unwillingly involved in the task. The action sequences are limited, and are mainly fistfights with the occasional hand held weapon, but that doesn’t take away from the film in the slightest. It’s an enjoyable, intense, thrilling, journey through and through.

I do recommend the film if you don’t want to focus on something heavy. Liam Neeson performs well throughout, shows a good range of emotion. His character does have a few instances where I can see resembles Taken in some way, when he’s investigating who shouldn’t be on the train, but in a good way, ever since Taken came out and those famous words were spoken, in these action thriller films, Liam Neeson has essentially played a version of that character ever since. That doesn’t matter, because that’s still entertaining. It’s not in any way Taken, so it shouldn’t be dubbed. He has showed some incredible diversity though, with his voice acting role in A Monster Calls, and The Narnia Franchise, and of course, probably his most famous film in his career, The Schindlers List. 

Thanks for reading
Antony Hudson
(TonyHadNouns)