The Commuter
Casting: liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Jonathan Banks, Elizabeth McGovern, Sam Neill
Rated: 6/10
liam Neeson has been in similar circumstances most of his career but that has not dimmed his calibre for thrilling stuff from a run-of-the-mill day of a common man. As a commuter in his latest one of the same name, he is a common train commuter going into the suburbs, selling policies to people and making a life with a loving wife and teenage son.
Only, life is never simple and when it concerns an ex-cop, and in Neeson’s garb, it certainly turns to give you befitting heebie-jeebies. Returning home after being laid off from his regular job and much too scared of revealing this to his family, he shares a couple of beers with his former NYPD partner who propels him to tell all and be above board with his wife.
With this well-meaning advice in his pocket, he takes the journey back home – only to be lured, threatened and pushed into being caught in a dangerous game of liquidating a witness to a murder.
Once the ordinariness of Neeson’s life is established in the early part of the film, it gets time to be extraordinary – something which Neeson and his amazing histrionic capabilities in building up a thriller are well recognised. He gives his everyday man veneer a makeover of a compelled superman so convincingly that you remember that The Commuter is just his latest venture with a long history of lending beauty and gumption to similar characters. From Taken to Run All Night to Unknown to Non-Stop —Neeson has built marvels on screen as none other.
In this one too, he builds it up slowly and takes the story to such a stirring conclusion that you stay in your seat till the very end.
Movie of the week, surely!
My Birthday Song
Casting: Nora Fatehi, Zenia Starr, Pitobash, Sanjay Suri
Rated: 3/10
Psychological thrillers are mind games that need much more intensity, edginess and pace than, say, a murder mystery or some such. It is a tricky genre which flowers only in ultra deft hands.
My Birthday Song, in that context, is out of place, slow and rather directionless. It hurtles to an end which it does not weave in the story and despite the hard work put in by lead actor Sanjay Suri as a philandering husband on a guilt trip, it fails to impact anything in you other than your exasperation.
Everything in the film, be it love, lust, guilt or regret, no emotion is fleshed out and no strand in the story of a pre-dreamt murder leads to any kind of whodunit whatsoever. The film hurtles from one frame to the other without much purpose and that’s what lets it down so completely.
Rajeev is a successful ad man who gets up to a recurring nightmare of a woman dying in his bed while his wife and two children are away – that too when he is making out with her! That gets you interested but sadly debutant director Samir Soni fails to get into the act of sustaining your interest. A promising start gets lost in an insipid lust getting guilty kind of a routine story.
Vodka Diaries
Casting: Kay Kay Menon, Raima Sen, Mandira Bedi
Rated: 5/10
Another psychological thriller, this! Not as insipid as My Birthday Song but not good enough either. Helmed by Kay Kay Menon, Mandira Bedi and Raima Sen, Vodka Diaries is not as heady enough as the brew it is titled on.
Yes, it does have its twists and turns and comes up with a viable though expected end, it takes too many twists and too many turns to be anything other than a convulsive story playing to the gallery on a razor thin script.
ACP Ashwani Bhatnagar (Menon) is a super cop who has a poetess wife he is madly in love with. Back from leave, he is caught in a rigmarole of murders all of which happen in and around a hotel/club called Vodka Diaries. As he tries to solve the serial killings, his wife goes missing and with that both he and the film get waylaid from what is a masterful story in bits and pieces.
The film goes from one snowclad mountain to the other flying high on good production qualities but as a story gets too prolonged a puzzle to fire continuous curiosity to get to the end.
At best, it is a 50/50 film for a lean week.