If you would have gone up to anyone before 2008 and told them that in ten years, Liam Neeson would be primarily known for being an action star, you would have been laughed at. Being known primarily for prestige dramas such as Schindler’s List and Michael Collins, an actor like Neeson seemed like the last person to dip his toes into action, especially considering that he was in his mid fifties at the time. But not only did he manage to pull this genre off with Taken, the film brought back a resurgence of 1990’s throwback action films, and many of them included Neeson at the forefront. Taken ended up reshaping his career, and now Liam Neeson teams back up with Jaume Collet-Serra in order to deliver the next “Liam Neeson saving people on a vehicle in January” movie with The Commuter. And trust me, if the Taken sequels didn’t make you feel like Neeson should try other things, then this film will as I can’t remember the last time I saw an actor so checked out of their own movie.

The Commuter takes place in modern day New York and centers around Michael MacCauley, played by Liam Neeson, a former police officer. After Michael is fired from his job as an insurance salesman, he is approached by a woman named Joanna, played by Vera Farmiga, who offers him $25,000 dollars to find someone on the train, or else she will start killing random passengers. Now, it is up to Michael to protect the train and his family for some reason against this woman. If you feel like you have seen Liam Neeson in this type of movie before, congrats, you have. This is the same tired formula we have seen him repeating for the past decade, all the way down to the corrupt police system being involved. You know exactly where the story will go the minute the exposition is through, and you can both see and hear each twist coming from a mile away. The only difference here is that it feels like there was no emotion put into this story, either by the writers or the actors. Not only does it feel like the writers were making this script purely for a paycheck, as the characters primarily speak in informational conversations, Liam Neeson practically sleepwalks through this movie, as each line is delivered with a level of boredom that is usually not seen in him. He is clearly going through the motions as he tries to act tough and tries to sound intimidating on a phone, but now it just comes off as tired. The film also wastes its excellent cast by regulating a great actress like Vera Farmiga to being on the phone for 95% of the movie. Also, Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad is in this film playing one of Michael’s friends on the train, and his character probably has about five minutes of screen time. The only actor who shines in this movie is Patrick Wilson, who plays Michael’s old co-officer Alex Murphy (Yes, that is his real name). Despite it being obvious what is going to happen with his character, Wilson plays it convincingly and manages to be the only one in the film giving a damn. Considering that Michael commutes on the train every day with these people, it was weird that I never got the sense that he was friends with any of these passengers. Also the acting on these passengers range from bland to awful. I could blame the actors for there performances, but when they are working with a script that feels like it was phoned in from Alaska, I can’t really blame them too much.

The only way to describe the film making of this movie is that it makes you feel like you have narcolepsy. The takes in this movie are excessively long and make the run time of one hour and forty five minutes this film seem much longer than it actually is. When you have multiple shots of Michael staring out at the passengers while on his phone for stretched out moments at at a time, the film leaves you in a tired state. Also, i don’t think there is a moment of levity in the entire film. The movie gives off such as self serious tone that you just kind accept the fact that you are probably not supposed to be having fun. This movie should be filled with tension and thrills that keep glued to your seat, but because the face of this movie never even cracks a grin, it’s hard to have a good time. But even if the movie didn’t take itself so seriously, you would still be distracted by the garbage quality of CGI. The action scenes and explosions toward the end of the movie look so fake that I was often times getting confused whether the movie I was watching was live action or animated. I get that Liam Neeson is getting old and he can’t do the same stunts that other action stars could do, but at least work around this and don’t have him dive and vault over waist high blockage like in this movie. Also, the last thirty minutes of this movie are so devoid of tension and so stretched out that I would be surprised if you are still awake by the end of it. We learn who the person Michael is supposed to track down about an hour into the movie, and the rest is just a forced climax with an extremely predictable twist that makes this movie appear to be exactly what it is, and that is manufactured. It’s not like this movie is the worst thing ever, it’s just beyond lazy and leaves no impression what so ever.

There is no denying that Liam Neeson has made this formula work in the past, with films such as Taken and Non-Stop. But with the Taken sequels and now this, it may be time for him to take a break from action and try something else. In the end, The Commuter is a boring and tired action film that features no tension and is easily the worst team up between Liam Neeson and Jaume Collet-Sera. While there are definitely worse movies you could see, I would still not recommend you see this in theatres, or better yet, just don’t watch it at all. This is one movie that most definitely got off on the wrong track.