THE COMMUTER (15)
★★★

HAVING now established a kind of second-wave action hero career for himself, Liam Neeson returns for this ludicrous yet fairly entertaining thriller that resembles an amalgamation of Speed, Source Code and Murder On The Orient Express.

Neeson plays 60-year-old Michael MacCauley, a cop-turned-insurance salesman who has been riding the same commuter train every day for the last decade. Each time he sees the same faces and speaks the obligatory niceties, each day uneventful and almost identical. That is until one morning a mysterious woman (Vera Farmiga) he has never seen on the train before sits down across from him and strikes up an intriguing conversation.

But a perfectly innocuous discussion about a hypothetical moral experiment soon turns sinister as it’s revealed he has just inadvertently agreed to take part for real.

His task is to find a specific passenger who doesn’t belong on the train before it arrives at its final destination or else he and his family will face dire consequences.

This is the fourth collaboration between Neeson and director Jaume Collet-Serra, after high-concept action-thrillers Non-Stop (Neeson has to stop a killer on a plane), Unknown (Neeson has to figure out why no one recognises him) and Run All Night (Neeson has one night to save his son).

The Commuter is a similarly ridiculous affair with enough plot holes to drive a train through; you really have to check in most of your brain at the door, retaining just enough to keep up with the many increasingly implausible twists and turns as it hurtles to a fittingly over-the-top finale.

And yet there’s something fun and involving about the film, a kind of Hitchcockian, Agatha Christie-esque approach that revels in the simple pleasure of trying to work out what exactly is going on. This is married with Serra’s impressively stylistic, B-movie directorial approach that ramps up the tension and is unafraid, for example, to execute an extended one-shot take of a fight that climbs over and around the train seats. The film fits a familiar mould but at least it attempts to visually stand out from the crowd.

Then there’s Neeson himself who both gives good value as the action hero the Taken franchise saw him morph into – the film somehow finds the time for a handful of fist fights, shoot-outs and potential train derailment peril amidst its whoisit mystery – and as an engaging everyman suddenly caught up in a situation his monotonous commute certainly hadn’t prepared him for. It’s nonsense but you get the distinct feeling it knows this and has fun with it.