The Commuter (2018)

Starring: Liam Neeson, Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Sam Neill, Elizabeth McGovern, Florence Pugh, Jonathan Banks, and Letitia Wright
Grade: B+

Liam Neeson’s run as an action hero has been hard to top recently.

The Commuter is another solid outing to add to the list. Even with age, Neeson is just as good as ever, showing no signs of slowing down.

Summary

Ex-cop and current life insurance salesman Michael MacCauley (Neeson) is going through a lot right now. Already having to deal with two mortgage payments and his son’s future tuition for college, he realizes he’s getting deeper and deeper into debt. His family lost everything in 2008 but after getting into insurance, Michael was able to rebuild his family over the last ten years. However, with all of these financial situations looming and five years from retirement, he cannot afford to slow down. He goes to work and early into the day, he finds out he’s being fired. Apparently, his salary and benefits package are too much against his return. Afterwards, his wife calls him to ask if he went to the bank to get an extension on the mortgage because their son has to register for his college classes, and she already mailed in the tuition check. Michael ends the conversation quickly after, choosing not to tell her just yet about him losing his job. He goes to a bar and meets up his good friend and former partner Det. Lt. Alex Murphy (Wilson). They talk, and he tries to cheer his friend up. Soon after, Captain David Hawthorne (Neill) comes in with some friends and the two aren’t too happy to see him, with Murphy suggesting he recently got his title of “Captain” because of politics. Watching the television at the bar, they see that some city planning official recently committed suicide after the DA announced an investigation. Just then, Captain Hawthorne interrupts to greet the both of them, especially since he hasn’t seen Michael in quite some time.

After he leaves, Murphy reminds Michael that he has a train to catch and pays his tab for him, on the basis that Michael tells his wife about his firing.

A regular commuter on the same train every day, Michael heads to the train. Upon noticing and talking with some of the regular commuters he usually sees, he notices he lost his phone. Sadly, the door of the train closes before he could go back to look for it. He sees his friend and fellow commuter Walt (Banks), who tells Michael that some woman (Farmiga) has been staring at him. As we see more of the passengers on this train that we will no doubt be dealing with throughout the course of this movie, Michael eventually finds a section of the train to settle in and sit down. Soon after, the woman sits down with Michael and introduces herself as Joanna, a mysterious woman that apparently studies human behavior. She proposes a hypothetical to Michael, and he humors her by listening.

Here’s the hypothetical: If she were to ask him to do a favor that he is qualified to do and the outcome is meaningless to him, but it could affect an individual on this train, would he do it?

He inquires further, but she doesn’t give him details right away. She just tells him that there could hypothetically be a reward, saying there might be $25,000 in a package in the bathroom and an additional $75,000 in cash coming if he completes this task. She explains that someone on this train doesn’t belong, and he needs to find out who. The person is carrying a bag with stolen goods and is going by the name of “Prynne”, though it’s not a real name. Also, this Prynne will only be on the train until the Cold Spring stop. Michael gets all the reward money if he finds Prynne and the bag, but he can’t leave the train before finding the bag, and he can’t tell anyone about the offer. She also mentions that Michael is a former cop, something a stranger shouldn’t know about him. Now, he’s starting to realize there’s more behind Joanna that meets the eye, and this might be a real offer. Before she leaves at her stop, she tells Michael he has until the next stop to accept the offer. Following this, Michael goes into the bathroom and looks in the air vent to find the money, realizing this offer is indeed real. So, he starts looking for Prynne. After questioning the ticket guy and getting nowhere, some girl (Wright) at the next stop enters the train and asks Michael if he’s down with the job, but he says “No”. She hands Michael a small envelope, says “they” are watching him, and then, she exits the train. Once the doors close, he opens the envelope to find his wife’s wedding ring. He asks one of the commuters that he knows to borrow his phone.

As he goes to one of the cars to wait for service, Walt talks to him about Joanna again while he’s reading the newspaper. Michael asks to see the sports section of the paper. After Walt gives it to him, Michael writes a note on it for Walt to go to the police because Michael’s family is in danger. He finally gets service and calls his wife, but she doesn’t pick up. He calls Murphy, but he doesn’t pick up either, so he leaves a message telling him what’s going on, asking for Murphy to send some cops to his house to check on his family.

Shortly after, the train makes another stop. Walt says goodbye and gets off. Next, Michael gets a call from Joanna. She tells Michael he accepted the job but immediately broke the rules she gave him. Now, he has to suffer the consequences. She has him look outside the window of the train to see some random person push Walt into incoming traffic and to his death. Joanna gives Michael the instructions: Find Prynne and find the bag. Otherwise, there will be further consequences, naming his wife and son directly. Once he identifies the person and finds the bag, he needs to put this GPS tracker onto it that was planted in his coat. Now, he only has three more stops and until 7PM to figure this whole thing out, or his family will be killed.

My Thoughts:

A lot of the movies Liam Neeson has starred in during his action hero phase have generally been good, albeit similar. Though The Commuter is very comparable to Non-Stop in a lot of ways, I still enjoyed the hell out of it.

Seeing Neeson in these situations where he has to fight for his life and solve something at the same time never gets old to me. You could honestly just rename each character he plays as “Liam Neeson”, and it wouldn’t make a difference. I’d still watch it regardless. Now, I’m not sure where The Commuter ranks in terms of Liam Neeson’s best action movies, but I think it might be up there for a multitude of reasons. The plot is intriguing enough to keep you hooked, the twists keep things fresh and exciting, we got a pretty good cast for an Neeson action vehicle, and everything is set up very well by Vera Farmiga’s small but pivotal role in the film. Her intriguing, glossy-eyed mysterious character is attention-grabbing. Her aura is strange enough to bring us in, so we can wonder aloud, “What’s the catch? You little weirdo”.

She also bares a slight resemblance to Kristen Wiig. This isn’t too important in the grand scheme of things, but I felt like it needed to be said.

The action is very good and very believable, considering Neeson’s age and limitations. It wasn’t too far to where I would think Neeson couldn’t pull it off. In addition, his ultra-serious demeanor and desperation in the role heightens the action and intensity of the story very well. He makes you believe in the perilousness of the situation right from the first death scene. It makes you feel like you’re on a running clock.

In the opening of the film, we can see how stressed-out Michael MacCauley is. With loads of debt being piled on, along with the stresses of being a father and husband, life has taken its toll on him. With mounting pressure of having to pay an exorbitant amount of money out of pocket for his son’s college, Michael still tries to keep a happy face for his wife until it all comes crashing down. Once that close-up hits Neeson’s face when he exclaims at his uncaring boss that he’s sixty, you understand the pain he feels. He can’t start over! This can’t happen right now, not at a time when he’s this desperate for cash! Why does this have to happen now? The situation Michael finds himself in is scary relatable. All of that hard work over ten years, and doing nothing dirty to get ahead, and he still gets treated like any other lame old employee? It sucks how accurate this can be. Life can really chew you up and spit you out. Even as his boss tries to give him a vague explanation of his firing, Michael zones out because of the frustration and we watch as his anxious feelings overcome his body. At this point, anyone could be on the verge of losing it. Now, he’s sixty years old, jobless, and on his way to pay college tuition fees (potentially a private college too). Could it get any worse for this man? This is why we’re perfectly set up for Joanna’s shady offer. If you catch a man on this bad of a day, in the midst of the worse period of his life, there’s a good chance you can rope him into something like this because the reward is too great not to attempt it.

I completely bought into Michael deciding to go through with the job, despite the mysteriousness surrounding the offer. A lot of times in similar films, I don’t think the stakes are high enough to warrant the protagonist pursuing something this risky but in Michael’s case, I can buy into it because of how great of an example this is of “the right place at the right time”. If his skills can help him accomplish this relatively easy task, he can land a $100,000 in doing so, and he has all this stuff he has to pay off after losing his job, I could see why he would think this was too good to pass up. Obviously, there’s always a catch and though he felt uneasy about the whole thing from the start, it’s hard to not say “Yes” considering the situation he’s in.

The avenues he takes to try and figure out this mystery are very exciting and keep things moving at a breakneck pace. Also, I liked that the passengers didn’t take too much screentime away from Neeson. They served their purpose, showed enough depth and personality in the crucial scenes given, and helped round out the film as things got deeper and deeper. They played their parts very well. For an action film, it was written well enough to keep your interest. More importantly, us action fans are only watching this because it’s a Liam Neeson action movie. This is why supporting characters are important but shouldn’t upstage the star of the story. In any other type of film, I would usually call for the side characters to have more to do, but action movies are rated on a much different scale than other genres. With that being said, the formula used for The Commuter was done right, finding the sweet spot for the supporting characters considering the premise and the star, and everyone came out of it looking good. Performance-wise, Liam Neeson did a better job than usual too. When Michael started to break as the mission gets increasingly harder, the film gets really good. He’s so done with the bullshit and the mind games and seeing Neeson struggle a bit more in what could’ve been a phoned-in performance was very cool to see.

It also fits the Michael character. At the point of his breakdown of sorts, the Michael we learn about would be worn out from pussyfooting around everything, trying to keep things quiet while he’s getting his ass kicked and his family is being threatened. Everyone has a breaking point, and Neeson gives it his all. Once he has enough of everyone’s shit, you’ll not only be entertained, but you’ll be just as hell-bent on solving this mystery (and genuinely tired) as Michael is. It can be a bit exhausting but at no point are you bored. Though I saw the twist coming a mile away because of the nature of the film and the casting, the predictability didn’t bother me in a groan-inducing way like it usually would. The climax was still very good regardless and added a lot to the narrative as a whole, once things are revealed. It was logical but still felt major, the tension was very good considering the buildup, and the characters were used strategically when the situation called for it.

The action is intense, Liam Neeson is great, the supporting characters make their mark, especially Patrick Wilson and a young Florence Pugh, and despite most passing this off as a random Liam Neeson action thriller, it’s good enough to be more than that. In general, The Commuter is a very solid action movie and generates enough out of its actors and premise to make it an exciting movie worth your time.