Michael soon realizes that this isn't a joke and then learns what needs to be done: There's someone on the train that will be getting off at the Cold Spring stop, with a bag and something very important in it. When he asks her why he would do something like that, she responds that it would be for $100,000 - $25,000 of which is currently hidden in a bathroom on the train and the bulk of which he'd get when the task was complete. After some small talk, she asks Michael if he'd be willing to do something if he'd never know or have to worry about the consequences. When Michael finally heads back home on the train, a woman (Vera Farmiga) takes a seat across from him. Hint to the uninitiated: when significant actors appear in what seem to be otherwise insignificant roles, it bears noting. Also, there is Alex's boss and the head of the police division, Captain Hawthorne (Sam Neill). Not yet wanting to reveal to his wife that he's been fired, Michael goes first to a local bar in the city, where he runs into a former NYPD colleague and friend, Alex Murphy (played by Patrick Wilson, and no relation to RoboCop). But MacCauley is about to have a very bad day – starting with arriving at work and finding out he's been axed. MacCauley – like many of our readers out there, I'm guessing – has a daily grind when it comes to work: get on the train, take it into Grand Central Station, go to work, hop back on the train and head home. He has a wife (Elizabeth McGovern in a small role), two sons, and one big mortgage (yet another factor that plays in his decisions). Neeson stars as Michael MacCauley, an insurance salesman who happens to be an ex-cop (that will come into play later) who lives in the suburbs but works in New York City. Unfortunately, it doesn't take this movie long to go off the tracks from Hitchcockian thriller to implausible silliness, but either way it's not that unpleasant of a ride – thank largely to Neeson, who's almost always watchable as the lead.

Sometimes it's a plane high above, sometimes it's a skyscraper in the city, this time it's New York City's commuter rail. Liam Neeson has a certain set of train transfers in The Commuter, another one of those 'ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances' action movies that puts our hero in a confined space.

The commuter full movie release date