The Commuter - review

Ah, the daily commute. It can become quite dull and routine can't it? You don't look forward to it but it is necessary for work. Doing the same thing day after day, one starts to hope one day something exciting or different might happen to alleviate the boredom.
But enough about Liam Neeson's film career since starring in Taken.
In The Commuter, Liam Neeson is man who is forced to do everything a mysterious, shadowy group of people tell him to do or his family will be hurt.
But enough about his film career since starring in Taken.
All joking aside, audiences go to these films expecting a certain type of film with a lead actor displaying a particular set of skills e.g. Neeson, The Stath, The Rock, etc.
This has resulted in some reviewers saying that they adjust their expectations and judgement accordingly.
Similar to a journey on Southern Rail, our expectations are deliberately low and with good reason. That doesn't mean however that we should let them off with bad service. This goes for genre films as well.
It is okay to give the audience what they want but there should be a benchmark for quality and they should strive to offer them something they haven't experienced before, or deliver it to them in a different, more exciting way.
So it is a shame that Neeson's character, after being threatened by a mysterious figure, is forced to uncover the identity of an unknown passenger in exactly the same plot as Non-Stop, although instead of a plane it is set on a train.
Also with Vera Farmiga as the one giving the orders, between this and Source Code, she is building a reputation as someone who loves to tell men what to do aboard commuter trains.
Like Non-Stop, there is mileage out of the central Guess Who game of spot the culprit. Is it Mike from Breaking Bad? Is it Lady Macbeth? Is it a stock broker played by Clem Fandango? Yes we can hear you Clem Fandango!
Sadly the film (literally) derails once the bad guy is revealed and that, along with a farcical scene replicating one of the most famous moments from a gladiator film, are moments so clearly signposted and as predictable as the stops along your route home.
Guess now we can look forward to Taken in a taxi in a couple of years so Neeson can complete his unique Planes, Trains and Automobiles trilogy.

2 stars

3 Days To Kill - review

Have assassins and government agents never watched any films about assassins and government agents?

If they had they would know that there is no such thing as "one last job", for just like Michael Corleone "just when I thought I was out they pull me in".

One of the frequent criticisms of modern movie trailers is that they give too much away but another, perhaps even greater, sin is when a film is completely mis-sold by its trailer, usually to its detriment.

This is one of those cases.

Watch the trailer and you be forgiven for thinking that this was a film where CIA operative Kevin Costner wants to quit to spend time with his family but is poisoned and is given 3 Days To Kill a list of people in order to secure the antidote.

Sounds like a reasonable description right? Wrong!

Succumbing to illness on a mission which leads to the escape of a target, Costner is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, given 5 months to live and future endeavoured by the CIA.
Returning to Paris to reconnect with his family, he is recruited by a shadowy agent played by Amber Heard to kill the target he missed in exchange for an experimental drug that could help prolong his life.

That is quite different no?

At first glance this looks to be another case of Taken syndrome where an ageing actor decides that instead of cashing in his pension, he cashes a pay check in order to reinvent himself as an action hero.

Even though it is written and produced by Luc Besson, it never really captures that feeling, despite another strong father-daughter relationship.

The action scenes are few and far between (and all of them feature in the trailer) and actually the film is more akin to Besson's Leon.

There are nice touches in the movie, with Costner returning home to find a group of African squatters in his flat yet unable to evict them due to the law and a relationship develops between them.

There was potential for quite an interesting take on this type of story, especially due to strong performances from Costner and Steinfeld, however an inability to decide what kind of film it wants to be, unnecessarily long running time and bland, uninvolving direction by McG (I find it interesting his name was kept off all the publicity materials) resulting in a bit of a misfire.

Despite mentioning the title in the film (always deserving of a cheer), the urgency behind the 3 Days To Kill is never felt and therefore ends up being a film that few will be Taken with.

2 stars