Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

Starring – Liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson

THE PLOT – Michael (Neeson) is an insurance salesman is on his daily commute home, when it quickly becomes anything but routine. After being contacted by a mysterious stranger (Farmiga), Michael is forced to uncover the identity of a hidden passenger on his train before the last stop. As he works against the clock to solve the puzzle, he realizes a deadly plan is unfolding and is unwittingly caught up in a criminal conspiracy. One that carries life and death stakes for himself and his fellow passengers.

Rated PG-13 for some intense action/violence, and adult language

THE POSITIVES

– No matter how many times Neeson has played this particular role in this particularly jaded situation, his everyman routine never loses flavor. As Michael, Neeson’s humanity shines through, depicting the only character that we, as well as the film cares about to put valued exposition into.

– Collet-Serra again adds a shade of weathered atmosphere to play into the real beauty of his picture. For a film that basically feels like it was straight out of 90’s action flicks like ‘Speed’ and ‘Air Force One’, there’s certainly a lot more to look at here that wets the appetite of anyone looking for warmth in personalized touch that rubs off vibrantly in every shot.

– Speaking of shots, the film’s train sequences are shot superbly, catering to a majority of tight-knit angles that speaks volumes to the very claustrophobia of the revealing situation around our protagonist.

– Despite being confined overwhelmingly in stage setting, the fight sequences pack enough brutality in brunt offense to keep the fight lover in all of us at bay. My personal favorite is the inclusion of a guitar that comes into play.

– The pacing for at least the first two acts is something that keeps this train moving at top speed. Sure, the setup cares more about the story and less about the pawns, but the mental gears of the audience continuously turn through a modern day whodunnit? that throws a wrench or two into theories.

– This is one film that isn’t demeaned by a PG-13 setting, keeping the dialogue classy and the violence sporadic to feed into the ‘less is more’ theory.

THE NEGATIVES

– Despite Neeson’s Michael, no other character is given even slightly enough exposition to make the big reveal something jaw-dropping in terms of shock factor. To fix this, I wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to get to the train, and let his supporting cast respond to this terrible day that Michael was having before he ever boarded. The biggest regret is unfortunately Farmiga’s antagonist character who never feels like an intellectual equal to Michael’s detective background.

– Third act blues. Would it be cliche to say that the final thirty minutes of this film flies off the railings? Well, I’ll just say that between a crash sequence that feels like an afterthought and a final scene that feels every bit as tacked on as it does tidy, there’s an overwhelming feeling that this script was written on an idea and very little else.

– I’m all for paying attention, but the clues used in this film to figuring out the motive are a bit too meandering and scatter-brained for my taste. I figured out Farmiga’s right hand culprit with about a half hour left of the movie, and that’s because I started to see that the obviousness of some events in the first act that stick out like a sore thumb. Convenience of being in the right place at the right time also serves Neeson well in cracking the case.

– The musical score by Roque Banos is disappointingly his worst to date. After riveting tonal capacities in films like ‘Evil Dead’ and ‘Don’t Breathe’, Banos here feels out of place, ushering through a strong repetition of tones that wouldn’t be good enough to make his B-sides of a greatest hits compilation. A thriller especially relies on the music to stir the uneasy in its audience, but its underwhelming string sometimes gives these fight scenes a feeling of stock sampling.

6/10