Film Reviews: Week 4 (Jan 22-28)

Major apologies about the lack of posts in the past week. I have been swarmed with work and also spending time with family and friends. Due to this, I only got to see two films that I wanted to and I am still to see Maze Runner: The Death Cure as well as Coco. These should be seen within the next two weeks though (hopefully). The two films that I saw last week were both cinema releases and were interesting to say the least.

The Commuter

I have never seen a movie starring Liam Neeson. I haven’t been interested in the likes of Taken or Non-Stop. What drew me to watch The Commuter was not only the setting of a train, but also the casting of Vera Farmiga. I am a huge fan of Bates Motel and she is fantastic in that, so when I saw that she was in this film I was very intrigued.

This film is definitely interesting. Watching this film was very overwhelming due to the amount of storylines and action that was crammed into 100 minutes. Yet even though there was so much going on, there were scenes that felt like nothing was happening and dragged on. The set-up was well executed and necessary to the main plot of the story, and also added reasoning to Neeson’s character for decisions made later on.

I also liked the idea of the train. Not only is it an interesting place to set majority of the film due to the moving aspect and separate carriages, but also the idea that people on the train are regular commuters an that helps Neeson decide who is the person he was looking for. There was one scene in particular where the action fight seemed to flow all in one shot and it was well executed.

The plot is so unrealistic and unbelievable. It took me out of the story to see such dramatic events happening at weirdly specific timing. That is especially the case in the bus crash moment, where the timing seems too good to be true.

There were also three or four plots that were occurring at the same time and it started to get clustered. With family issues, drama on the train and a court case also being intertwined together and trying to connect as one, the flow of the film was not as smooth as it could have been.

This is definitely an interesting take on a film, but I think the execution was not the best. The acting was well done, but there is not much to attach to the characters to care much apart from Neeson. It isn’t a bad film to say the least, but it also isn’t the greatest.

2.5/5