Review of The Commuter (2018) by Craig V — 20 Jan 2018

The Commuter (2018) is an action-packed mystery film without a lot of the action one would have expected given actor Liam Nesson's cinematic background recently. With several slow scenes and a drawn out story line, this is not one of Neeson's better films.

The film is about a business man who is down on his luck and finds himself as a player in a crime conspiracy during his normal commute home. Nesson plays his traditional bad-ass ex-cop type role very well- though one has to wonder if he is tired of his one-dimensional characters. The story itself was rather slow and it seemed to be drawn out more than it should have been. There was little character development throughout the film and I was left wanting more from just about all of it.

To be fair to writers Byron Willinger and Philip de Blasi, it is a challenge to have a 105 minute feature film set in essentially one location. They tried to do the most, however, the plot followed a generic story-line format of "guy who is given a morally questionable task and then struggles with the decision of right and wrong" and did not provide the big twist I would have expected in this type of mystery film. It once again, followed the generic plot twist one could have guessed about a third of the way through the film.

Overall, The Commuter is not nearly as good as one would have hoped. Without a new and good plot, this action lacking film will not live up to most standards.