Liam Neeson Lays Waste To a Train in ‘The Commuter’ Trailer
Spanish filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra has earned himself a cult following for mounting competent mid-range action pictures, but the great work of his career is putting Liam Neeson inside of public transit vehicles. First, he stuck Liam Neesons on a plane for the sleeper hit Non-Stop. Many filmmakers would have stopped drilling right there, having struck the rich oil of a late-phase Neeson tour de force, but Collet-Serra is no ordinary filmmaker. He’s an innovator, then placing Neeson inside the tortured lockbox of his own soul for their follow-up collaboration Run All Night. And now this visionary shall complete his Neeson Punches People and Things Trilogy with The Commuter, which strands our man Neeson in — where else? — a train threatening to run off its tracks.
The premise of The Commuter as detailed in the newly released trailer seems a bit sweaty, but of course that’s far from the point. So what if it’s pretty much a terrestrial rehash of Non-Stop and Red Eye and Flightplan? We’re here to watch Neeson throw some guys off a speeding bullet train, not Proust. When Neeson’s mild-mannered wage slave catches the eye of a beguiling woman (Vera Farmiga), it seems like romance may be in the cards, but fate has other plans. She poses a dark challenge to our man, that he must unravel a mystery contained within their train’s cars before the body count starts rising.
Mysteries of this nature are tough, because of course we know to keep our eye on shifty-looking passenger Jonathan Banks and not, say, any of the extras. But transparently inevitable as the plot may appear, all that matters is the Neeson punching action. If we play our cards right, maybe Neeson and Blake Lively can team up to punch a shark next time. The Commuter barrels into theaters on January 12, 2018.