The Commuter marks his fourth film with Spanish director Jaume Collet-Serra and it is pretty much business as usual as another flawed, world-weary man is obliged to keep calm and carry on under the most extraordinary circumstances.
Neeson’s Michael MacCauley plays a former detective now sleepwalking through life as an insurance salesman in New York.
When he is laid off he heads home on his regular commuter train where the mysterious Joanna (Vera Farmiga, pictured left with Neeson) makes him an offer he cannot refuse.
In return for $100,000 all he has to do is identify a passenger before the train’s last stop. Naturally it is not as simple as it sounds and he is soon embroiled in a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game. The director keeps events moving at a fair pace, emphasising the paranoia and claustrophobia of a confined space where everyone could be part of the same conspiracy.
It is nonsense but it is slick, highly entertaining nonsense.