Two stars. Rated PG-13, for action violence and occasional profanity
By Derrick Bang
When Lewis Carroll’s Alice quite
reasonably suggests that one can’t believe impossible things, the Queen of
Hearts insists that “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things
before breakfast.”
The queen would have been right
at home with this movie.
 |
| When Joanna (Vera Farmiga) — a total stranger — sits opposite Michael (Liam Neeson) and proposes a mysterious "what if?" scenario, he assumes that she's merely passing the time during their commute. Increasingly unlikely events quickly will demonstrate that she's completely serious... |
Director Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Commuter is a hilariously ludicrous
start to the cinematic new year: a thriller that makes absolutely no sense and
survives on momentum alone ... until it doesn’t.
The script — assign the blame to
Byron Willinger, Philip de Blasi and Ryan Engle — sails right past improbable and far-fetched, and heads straight into preposterous. It demands a suspension of disbelief far beyond the capability
of mere mortals.
Theater ushers will have quite a
task after each screening, carefully scooping up all the viewer eyeballs that
have rolled right out of their sockets.
This storyline probably began
with the intriguing notion that regular commuters — despite sharing (in this
case) the same New York train, five days a week, 52 weeks a year — really don’t
know much about the folks with whom they exchange cheerful greetings twice each
day. What secrets might be concealed behind those superficial smiles?
Insurance salesman Michael
MacCauley (Liam Neeson) finds out one day, when his late-afternoon trip home is
interrupted by an enigmatic woman (Vera Farmiga, as Joanna) who sits in the
opposite chair and strikes up a conversation. She behaves like a friendly,
flirty psychologist, posing a “What would you do for $100,000?” scenario.
Michael indulges her (already
unlikely, on a New York City train).
Perhaps, being well read, he
recognizes this riff on Richard Matheson’s 1970 short story, “Button, Button,”
in which a mysterious man gives a poverty-stricken couple a box with a button,
promising $200,000 if they push the button, which will kill “someone whom you
don’t know.” (It was filmed as an episode of the 1985-86 revival of The Twilight Zone, and then again in
2009, as the feature film The Box.)
Joanna departs at the next
station, with an ambiguous comment that suggests her scenario isn’t all that
fictitious. Michael, curious, investigates ... and finds a percentage of the
cash, hidden right where she promised. At which point, she calls his smart
phone, insists that he now has no choice but to comply with her demands ...
lest his wife (Elizabeth McGovern) and son be harmed.
Michael’s task: to find the
person on the train who “doesn’t belong,” is carrying a bag, and answers to the
name of “Prin.” Before the train reaches the end of the line.
