Review: The Commuter

The Commuter
Cert: 15 / 104 mins / Dir. Jaume Collet-Serra / Trailer



Oh Liam, you've done it, well done mate! After all these years of struggling you've found a writer/director who will (twice, now) scribble some backstory about your character's Irish origins into an early scene, in a move to reassure audiences that the accent is supposed to be like that. I am genuinely happy about this. The pair's latest collaboration, The Commuter is not to be held too close to the light, of course, what with its central premise being the absolute fantasy that any seasoned working-age user of public transport would engage in a conversation with a chatty stranger, rather than just exhaling audibly while staring at their book/newspaper/phone.

So, in Jaume Collet-Serra's urban thriller, our plucky hero Michael MacCauley*¹ takes the train home after being laid off from his insurance job, only to find himself talking with the aforementioned stranger who has an intriguing proposition: find the passenger who doesn't belong*² on the commuter train*³, plant a tracking device on them and pocket a hundred grand in cash for his trouble*⁴. Naturally, things escalate in the way they tend to do when a beleagured Neeson tells a stranger that he has a family he quite likes. Before long someone's getting punched right in the vestibule and Liam's in a race against the clock (indeed, against the track) to find the crucial missing link before the train reaches its deadly destination with passengers getting picked off one-by-one. A kind of Source Code On The Orient Express, if you will.

And all-in-all, the film is somehow not awful. Many, many types of ridiculous of course, but once the script establishes that the stops on this line are all four minutes apart while in the actual run-time that takes around fifteen minutes, you pretty much know where you are. The elongation of the Penelope Pitstop cliffhangers is only paralleled by the Tom & Jerry style resilience of our punchy/kicky/shooty hero (whom the script goes to the trouble of identifying as being a 60yr old man, whilst subjecting him to trials which would wipe out a 30yr old). On that subject, the movie also has some of the most haphazard fight choreography I've ever seen committed to the screen, but the choppy cinematography isn't necessarily helping matters.

With a third-act-reveal telegraphed as firmly as a station name on a departure board, the story (apparently written by three people) tries its best to twist and turn against audience expectations, but is as much on-the-rails as its locomotive setting. To be fair, I pretty much chortled my way through the final 40 minutes or so, although man this is longer than it needs to be.

As Liam Neeson Punching People In The Face movies go, The Commuter is perfectly fine. But it's also perfectly forgettable*⁵. Which is also fine.

Bonus props for casting Patrick Wilson as a cop named Alex Murphy. Now I desperately want this to be the stealth-prequel for another Robocop reboot...

Liam Neeson Films™.



The natural home for this movie is in a cardboard 'Gifts For Father's Day' display stand with a £4 sticker on the front..



By all means rent it, or wait until it's got that sticker before adding it to your Liam Neeson Shelf™.



Well, no.



Nope.



There isn't. Ridiculous.



Level 1: Qui-Gon Jinn is in this.





*¹ A quasi-retired Chicago cop who is now a struggling family man in an unjust world and we should really just be thankful he's not a recovering alcoholic like every other Liam Neeson Punching People In The Face movie hero... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² "Someone on this train does not belong!" quips the mysterious Joanna. But Michael somehow does not reply "Yeah, it's you isn't it? Sitting there, attempting a conversation with fellow travellers like that's a completely non-sociopathic thing to do during rush hour. Now if you don't mind, I'm idly scrolling down my Facebook timeline, silently judging everyone I wish I didn't know. Leave me. The fuck. Alone..." ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ "I've never been on a commuter train before!" exclaims Joanna with suspiciously fluttering eyelashes. But Michael somehow does not reply "Yeah, it's just a normal train, mate. They run all the time. This is a train which happens to be full of commuters because of what time of day it is. There's nothing remotely fucking special about all this, I assure you. You need to get out more, although I really wish you hadn't, today." ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ "I guess you must know everyone on this train?" purrs Joanna inexplicably. But Michael somehow does not reply "Look, this 'talking to strangers' thing, didn't your mum tell you anything about how weird or wrong it is? I don't want to talk to you. Christ, there are two people in this carriage from my office and I'm not even talking to them. Go. The fuck. Away." ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁵ Naturally, if there's a sequel starring Jason Statham and it's set on a shuttle bus into a business park in the home counties, I'll be all over that... ^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Woman In Gold

Woman In Gold
Cert: 12A / 109 mins / Dir. Simon Curtis / Trailer



You know when you read a human-interest type story or article, and somewhere near the bottom there'll be a line saying "negotiations have opened over the film-rights to the story", and you mentally picture an over-excited lawyer on the phone to his mum with one or both of them saying "Ooh! Perhaps you'll/I'll be played by Ryan Reynolds in the movie!" and you instantly dismiss that thought, not because the conversation wouldn't happen but because that's just not a feasible casting choice for a gentle, Sunday afternoon drama..?

Well, Woman In Gold stars Ryan Reynolds as fresh-face lawyer, in the true story of Maria Altman, a Jewish refugee who managed to flee Austria during the Second World War, and their legal campaign to reclaim Gustav Klimt's iconic Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, when documentation is unearthed revealing that the Austrian State Gallery acquired the painting in terms which voided the original intent of the owner's will.

If you think that sounds more like an earnest courtroom drama than a film about art, then you'd be partially correct. The film spends around two thirds of its running-time in the early twenty-first century, following Maria (Helen Mirren)'s legal proceedings with her lawyer, Randol Schoenberg*¹, complete with research-montages full of brow-rubbing and photocopiers with green scanner-lights. The other third of the film is an ongoing flashback-thread, showing Maria's home-life in Vienna as a little girl with her aunt (Adele from the painting) and during the war as a young woman, up to and including her escape to the USA as a refugee.

I think it's fair to say that the period-pieces are far more engaging than the modern ones, and the story of the painting is far more interesting than the one of the legal battle surrounding it, even though the strands rely on each other fully. The cast in the earlier timeline were largely unknown to me (and the ones I did recognise, I recognised as 'character' actors) so it was easier to believe in that part of the story. Because as credible as they both are in this, you never forget that you're watching Helen Mirren and Ryan Reyolds. They're both 'good', but the film should really be about the painting, not the performers, and I think a slightly less starry level of casting would have helped this (although obviously the names help put bums on seats, which is the other important thing).

Woman In Gold has some stretches of absolute, undiluted brilliance (in both of its timelines); moments which make you glad you've gone to watch the film in a cinema; moments in which the massive screen concentrates and amplifies the emotion of the story and the history of the artwork. But these are punctuated by some of the most cliched and perfunctory scenes you've witnessed outside of a Channel5 made-for-TV movie. The film doggedly hangs on to its 'will the underdog succeed in winning the battle?' methodology, which - even if the viewer is unfamiliar with the story of the painting - is redundant to the point of insulting the audience. SPOILER: Yes, they win. It's a true story. People don't make films of this sort of thing unless they win. Although to be fair, people don't make films of fictional cases like this unless they win, either.

But the great moments outweigh the bad ones and make Woman In Gold well worth watching. It's certainly changed the way I'll look at the painting, and that's the important thing, i think.

With the best will in the world, probably not.



It's a sort of "£5 on DVD" type film. You might watch it more than once, but you won't watch it repeatedly.



Sadly not.



Despite battling with its own screenplay, it does.



Nope.



There isn't. Surprisingly.



Helen Mirren voiced Deep Thought in 2005's Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy film, a film which also starred Warwick 'Wicket' Davis.







*¹ I wanted to say 'her lawyer and nephew' there, but I'm fairly certain he's not her nephew. They're definitely related, but in such a convoluted way that the film doesn't actually put a name on the connection. Anyway, my bad for not paying attention to that part of the exposition at the start of the film.

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.