Our stern, but honorable protagonist, who in similar films might be played by Daniel Craig, Matt Damon or Liam Neeson, is Father Quart, portrayed by Richard Armitage (“Ocean’s 8”). We are introduced to Quart in suitable tough guy pose — performing press-ups while stripped to the waist, which is not the only time that this male body is presented as a spectacle. Quart is a member of Vatican External Affairs — i.e., Vatican intelligence — sent to investigate a church in Seville. The church is up for demolition so that urban regeneration / gentrification can proceed, but the owner of the land as well as the resident priest are resisting the developers. Mysterious deaths in the church cause the Vatican to take an interest, an interest further fueled by a mysterious hacker who breaks through the Vatican’s firewalls to send a personal plea to the Pope. Eager to avoid a scandal, the head of External Affairs, Monseñor Paolo Spada (Paul Guilfoyle, “Spotlight”) dispatches Quart, who is struggling with guilt over his last assignment. Quart insists to all that he encounters that he is in Seville to “write a report,” but the various figures he meets, including landowner Macarena Bruner (Amaia Salamanca, “Despite Everything”), Padre Príamo Ferro (Paul Freeman, “A Fantastic Fear of Everything”), Pencho Gavira (Rodolfo Sancho, “Don’t Listen”), Gris Masala (Alicia Borrachero, “Terminator: Dark Fate”) and Comisionado Navajo (Victor Mallarino, “Bluff”) are, not unreasonably, convinced that there is more going on. Indeed, Quart quickly learns of heated marital disputes, local legends, blackmail and cover-ups.

The Catholic Church lends itself to this genre. Like intelligence agencies, it is presented as a large-scale institution with bureaucracy, multiple departments, an almost regal presence at the top, senior bigwigs, field agents plus high technology, and tensions with local authorities. Some might find it unrealistic that a priest is equipped with a handgun and remote tech support, running around like James Bond or Jack Bauer. Others might find it all too believable that the Church wields this sort of power. Ultimately, whether any of this is realistic or not is irrelevant, because the real question is does it work as a narrative? For the most part, the answer is yes, as screenwriter-director Sergio Dow delivers an intriguing and absorbing thriller with attractive Euro-locations and many ornate surroundings in which its colorful cavalcade of characters clash. Dow’s direction is unremarkable but functional, eschewing shaky cam stylistics or jarring editing like Paul Greengrass, or attention-grabbing long takes à la Sam Hargraves’ “Extraction.” The action sequences are punchy but contained, allowing us to see the action choreography and keeping gunshots to a minimum.

Unusually though, Dow manages to make hacking dramatic. An early scene in the Vatican’s cyber security center features inter-cutting between the priestly tech team (because that’s a sentence) and a mysterious hooded figure hacking into their systems with all the import of breaching the NSA. Fingers tapping on keyboards and various screens of rapidly appearing code are not inherently exciting, but with judicious cutting, Dow and editors Pablo Blanco and Miguel Angel Prieto evoke genuine tension more akin to Michael Mann’s electrifying “Blackhat” than the tedious “Live Free or Die Hard.”

Pleasingly, despite the slightly camp hacker figure, The Man from Rome features relatively little in the way of moustache-twirling villainy. A loose assembly of enemies demonstrates the globalized nature of finance, embezzlement, development and corruption. That said, Gavira makes for a convincing bastard, both in terms of his financial venality and domestic attitude.

In opposition to these shady characters, Armitage is an engaging lead, channeling an energy reminiscent of Clive Owen in “The International.” As Monseñor Spada, Guilfoyle is a tricky presence, appearing by turns both trustworthy and also less so. Carlos Cuevas as Padre Cooey provides a Q-like figure to Quart’s 00-Dog Collar, while Salamanca makes Macarena a suitable damsel who manages her distress quite well, thank you very much. Fionniula Flanagan (“Havenhurst”) makes a surprising appearance as a Spanish Duchess, who is perhaps used rather heavy-handedly. As this list may indicate, the film has a lot of characters, and it may be hard to keep up with them, but it does keep the viewer guessing, which is part of the fun with a film like this. And by large, this is a fun film, that effectively infuses the genre tropes with its religious conceit. Some elements are less effective: There is a romance angle that goes nowhere, so begs the question of what was the point? More grating is the constant presence of English dialogue. One character is Irish and two are American, the rest are Spanish, Italian or from Eastern Europe. Yet in Vatican City and Seville, everyone speaks English, with a variety of accents. With a largely Spanish cast and a clear presence of internationalism, the English is quite jarring, to the extent that when Quart orders a coffee in Spanish, it comes as something of a relief. For an international co-production between Spain, Italy and Colombia, it is strange and annoying that subtitles still seem to be a big problem.

Aside from these two aspects, and a rather clunky title, The Man from Rome is an effectively intriguing conspiracy mystery that blends espionage, cyber thrills and religion into a rich concoction. It may not be worth devout worship, but no one involved in the film need say a Hail Mary.

The opening of the film shows promise, as the camera tracks along a road surrounded by desert scrubland, before arriving at an overturned pickup truck. A young woman, later revealed to be Zoe Guzman (Elizabeth Selby, “A Cry in the Night: The Legend of La Llorona”), emerges from the vehicle and starts to run, only to meet a mysterious death. From here, various figures appear and inspect the scene, make reference to wider events that the viewer can expect to be clarified later, and leave us with more questions than we started with. It’s a typical and effective opening, used functionally here although with less sense of menace or atmosphere than something like “Wind River.” The comparisons keep coming, and they don’t get more flattering.

Director April Mullen (“Below Her Mouth”) leans into the modern Western setting of Tim Doiron’s screenplay. The story emphasizes small figures within wide and potentially overwhelming environments, echoing “No Country for Old Men” and “Hell or High Water.” This conceit of scale includes the characters, vehicles and buildings within expansive vistas, lensed attractively enough by Russ De Jong and Gavin Smith. It also includes the narrative, which works as a neo-noir in the same vein as “Red Rock West” and “Sicario.” The titular town forms the main location, and its isolation from wider civilization recalls the frontier town of the western myth. Into this town that [insert law, God, society] forgot comes Arthur Bretnik (Aaron Eckhart, “Sully”), a grizzled ex-cop, now private investigator, with a tragic history and a massive conspiracy complex to boot (although no drinking problem, must have missed that at the Cliché-Mart). Arthur is a man beyond the edge, living in a converted trailer out in the New Mexico desert, on an area of land literally named “Middle of Nowhere.” Making him a conspiracy theorist is potentially interesting, as Arthur and his slightly less-unhinged friend Jimmy Cleats (Tommy Lee Jones, “Ad Astra,” creating another intertextual link to “No Country for Old Men”) record a conspiracy theory podcast. When contacted and subsequently hired by the mother of Zoe Guzman, Arthur sets out to investigate what happened.

Arthur as a protagonist opens the film to criticisms of the white savior complex. A town where indigenous, immigrants and people of color are under threat requires the intervention of a white figure of authority to save them from, something. Ah, you might say, but Arthur is hardly a savior, since he walks with a limp and is clearly mentally unstable. Arthur’s instability is emphasized through the repeated use of flashbacks and hallucinations, recalling the death of his family as well as a previous case that he worked on. These moments as well as others make the film reminiscent of “Shutter Island,” and like that film Wander refers to wider issues, including crime and immigration, government control and mental health. However, these various elements receive little more than lip service that comes across as lazy rather than interested. If the film is attempting to critique or unpack the white savior archetype, it needed to do more not to deliver a pretty perfunctory take on mental health.

Eckhart does a decent job of portraying someone struggling with reality, and he bears the physicality of Arthur well with his rolling gait and weighted stance. The other performances are mostly fine, although Heather Graham (“Wetlands”) is wasted as Shelley Luscomb, Arthur’s friend and, when the plot requires, lawyer. For Batman fans, there is some fun to be had in seeing two versions of Harvey Two-Face go face-to-face (pun intended), and one may wonder if Jones and Eckhart compared notes on such things. However, neither have much to work with in the script, and the development for Jimmy is as creaky as the rusted doors forced open at some points. As Elsa Viceroy, Katheryn Winnick (“The Dark Tower”) comes off the best, bringing genuine steel as well as mystery to her role as well as the film overall.

While the convolutions of the plot might be acceptable, what ultimately makes Wander unforgivable is Mullen’s near hysterical visual style. From that opening long tracking shot, we are treated to an almost constantly mobile camera that serves to distract rather than engage. At times, the camera rushes towards a location, only to then retreat at equal speed. This device is at least narratively motivated, but other visual tics seem intended only to remind us again and again that ARTHUR IS UNSTABLE. Yes, thank you, we got it, could we have some show, don’t tell please? The spinning narrative and style reach their zenith (or nadir) in the film’s climax, which could have been tragic and emotionally resonant. Instead, it leaves one with the feeling that everything we have seen was rather stupid, but with an earnestness that removes any sense of shlocky fun. Indeed, for all the mirth at the end, the final moments may leave you thinking that the last laugh is on you.

But unlike other recent remakes that pilfer from the studio’s cartoon catalog, such as the soft-hearted “Cinderella” and surprisingly charming “Aladdin,” The Lion King affords no room for generous praise. This is as simperingly safe as anything the studio has ever done. No exaggeration. This is the peak right here. No other theatrically released Disney movie is as creatively bankrupt and woefully worthless as this one.

Quite literally, the only attempt to add anything to the frustratingly familiar experience arrives in the form of a fart gag and another fart gag, followed by one more fart gag. Just try to wrap your head around that. The most powerful movie studio in the world just sold you a nearly shot-for-shot remake of a movie that could easily use a bit of narrative tinkering here and there, only to break wind in your face a few times.

Other than that, this is just the same sequences, same lines, same jokes, same images, same music cues, same emotional beats, only with the original’s occasional eccentricities excised in favor of bland blather. Musical numbers lack color (“Can’t Wait to Be King”), flavor (“Be Prepared”), or even the proper time of day (“Can You Feel the Love Tonight?”), but they’re all there and all inferior. The characters are mostly the same, except every performance serves only to highlight how much better the original cast was. Even returnee James Earl Jones is worse this time around!

Jeremy Irons’ velvety drawl is most missed whenever villain Scar appears on screen, but the absence of Nathan Lane, Ernie Sabella, Whoopi Goldberg, Cheech Marin, Jim Cummings, and Matthew Broderick leaves a cavernous hole. Jeff Nathanson’s corpse of a script seems to recognize the role each character played in the original movie, but it becomes hopelessly lost the moment it steps a mere inch outside the strict boundaries of the 1994 pic’s template.

So, the hungry hyenas that were such riotous comic relief in the original movie are still comic relief now, only they’re extremely unfunny and dull since the obsessively photorealistic approach to the characters so significantly cuts down on their potential for silliness. They’re meant to be more menacing instead, but as with everything and everyone else, this new take results in pure boredom.

Other attempts at humor fall short too. Robbed of his more theatrical showman personality, Timon (now voiced by Billy Eichner, “Most Likely to Murder”) is an irritant spouting the same lines that Lane made sing in the original. His sidekick, the wiry warthog named Pumbaa (voiced by Seth Rogen, “Long Shot”), is responsible for the aforementioned farting, so you can imagine how I feel about this new version. But the issue runs much deeper because there’s a jovial innocence to Sabella’s original voice recording that Rogen can’t capture and the difference is especially jarring when the character is so clearly supposed to flatulently follow in the footsteps of his animated ancestor.

This problem extends across the whole project. Everything contained within the movie’s frames is kept on such a short leash that there’s no opportunity to explore any new territory beyond a quick throwaway line or two, which clashes with the charmless casting. Insisting that the movie adhere so closely to the original, scene by scene, shot by shot, can only work if the new voice actors are up to the task.

Casting is usually director Jon Favreau’s strongest suit, but here he just painfully reaffirms how good the 1994 cast was and how little room they left for improvement. Photorealistic animated animals also have a lot less inherent personality than their more stylized counterparts, so there’s a gap in the fantasy that has a peculiarly deadening effect. Perhaps that explains the stifling stench stretching across this CGI savanna. And no, that’s not a fart joke.

It would seem like an updated, longer version of “The Lion King” could address how rushed the hero’s journey is in the original movie, wherein cub-turned-king Simba (Donald Glover, “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” in the new movie’s back half) is exiled from his pride, makes new friends in some jungle oasis, ages into an adult lion, and comes to terms with his tragic past all in a matter of mere minutes and mainly with the help of one montage-inspiring song. But when you’re crafting a carbon copy, you obviously bring the original’s flaws along for the ride.

Perhaps none of this matters. Disney already owns most of Hollywood by now and they’ll keep carving out the safest path to continue their dominance. “The Lion King” has long been one of the studio’s most popular titles, so the thought process is understandable from their perspective. Why mess with a good thing? Keep it all as Lion King-y as possible and the worst-case scenario is that fans don’t like it as much as the original. Big deal.

I offer a shrug of indifference then. We’re all just pawns in Disney’s bid for a media monopoly, sipping our sodas like morons as the ghost of Walt digs into our pockets for spare change. This is nothing new, of course. It’s something quite old, really. Disney has been very good at what they do for a long time and the past several years have been an especially towering high point for the studio.

Oftentimes, the House of the Mouse produces quality movies that are impressively cognizant of the company’s history and legacy. It is here that the roar of The Lion King is so empty, though. This is as straightforward and simplistic a plan to strike box office gold as any ever devised. It is never anything more than a glorified re-release fancily packaged to be freshly stuffed down audiences’ throats. It’s an invitation to waste two hours and get angry afterwards. Thanks a lot, Disney. In what could be a brilliant bit of cross-promotion, I can practically hear Dwayne Johnson’s delightful demi-god character from “Moana,” one of the company’s best movies this decade, calling out across the cinematic abyss: “You’re welcome!”

It’s been nearly 30 years since Lazar, a physicist with an inexplicably shadowy past, decided to spill the beans to the media about highly classified work he did at a top-secret government base in the Nevada desert, where the famed Area 51 is mysteriously located. Lazar claimed that he had been hired to reverse engineer several alien spacecraft with the hopes of harnessing the saucers’ astonishingly advanced technology.

According to Lazar, he felt that the American people were being done a disservice by a deceitful government, so he came forward with his story. Apparently, he’s been dodging death threats, assassination attempts, and FBI raids ever since.

On the surface, it has all the makings of a great story, from the bookish whistleblower matter-of-factly describing a supposed collision of fact and science fiction to the alleged attempts to silence him, but the movie fails to explain why this strange tale is being dredged up again now. There’s hardly anything new to share and there’s actually very little story to tell.

Corbell simply seems to be interested in the topic, so he did some research, got some access to Lazar, and decided to make a movie of it. In the moment, following leads and uncovering slivers of suggestive info must have felt pretty exciting, but the end result is a repetitive and rudimentary rundown of conspiracy theories with fraying loose ends.

Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers is basically Corbell cobbling together interviews with Lazar and occasionally chatting with investigative reporter George Knapp, who originally interviewed Lazar back in 1989 when the physicist decided to go on the record about what he’d seen at the base known as S4. Knapp has apparently remained invested in the flying saucer story for the last three decades and is, like Corbell, quite sure that Lazar is legit. Their conversations are just two guys convincing each other of the same thing they both already believed in.

Herein lies a significant problem that Corbell can’t be bothered to address. This is a movie that preaches only to the choir, so if you want to believe that the U.S. government has been in possession of alien technology for decades, this movie will pat you on the back. If you don’t want to believe in that sort of thing, this movie will rehash enough of its points enough times that you’ll be thoroughly irritated by the end and no more convinced than you were at the beginning.

As an interview subject, Lazar is relatively affable and articulate, but he often seems slightly annoyed that he’s still talking about this and additionally coasts along as if on auto-pilot, repeating anecdotes and explanations with all the passion of a programmed machine. Perhaps understandably, he’s also quite defensive about the whole situation, eager to be taken seriously and yet exhibiting zero patience for anyone that even thinks of questioning his story’s validity.

On the other end, Corbell is almost childlike in his excitement and eagerness to believe. He enthusiastically shares any shred of evidence that he’s found that might corroborate Lazar’s claims and acts as though the tiniest glimmer of information, such as some scientists admitting they can’t officially deny the existence of an enigmatic element, is a Holy Grail of proof instead of the near nothingness that it actually appears to be.

The issue isn’t Corbell’s willingness to accept Lazar’s story as absolute truth, but rather the glaring discrepancy between how little new information the director is actually unveiling and how much time and attention he devotes to these scraps.

At one point, a clandestine meeting between interviewer and interviewee is built up as if to suggest that it’s the extra-terrestrial equivalent of Deep Throat meeting Woodward in the parking garage and yet nothing of consequence is revealed other than that the FBI might be listening in. The FBI’s interest in Lazar fuels much of the assumed mystique of Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers, but Lazar has to remain mum about the details and Corbell just fills in the blanks on his own.

It’s another dead end, a tiny scrap of narrative information that the movie relies on for dramatic purpose in absence of anything else. For all of Corbell’s passion, he can’t simply will the story into existence. There’s just only so much that Lazar can say on the subject and then it’s up to the director to provide further context. But that context leads to dull and uninteresting places, like Corbell trying to prove that Lazar was actually interviewed for the S4 job at a specific location named by Lazar, as if confirming that the job existed is proof that Lazar tinkered with alien technology.

These leaps of logic prevent the movie from becoming a serious examination of its subject and further highlight how little proof is or ever will be available to the public. It’s then left rather openly to us to decide whether or not we want to believe Lazar’s story. Corbell can’t make a very compelling argument for either position. Also, randomly enough, neither can Mickey Rourke.

The gravelly-voiced actor whose career has pinballed him back and forth between the A-list (“The Wrestler”) and the Z-list (“Passion Play”) is operating at rock bottom here, gurgling out philosophical mush that plays over erratically inserted and laughably silly computer animation sequences. These moments are the epitome of an afterthought, likely a late attempt to drum up some potential publicity by being able to put a semi-famous actor’s name in the marketing materials. Rourke’s ramblings feel completely disconnected from the rest of the movie and the animation that accompanies his voice-over does the movie no visual favors.

A viewer might walk away from Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers with a sense of who Lazar is, but they won’t likely find themselves swayed in any one direction. This is a movie and a subject that plays best to the believer, but even then, it offers precious little substance. By the time the movie ends as Corbell finds he has no more tidbits to share, it’s at least quite clear whose side the director is on. Lazar won’t be alone in feeling vindicated if E.T. ever comes knocking at Earth’s door.

But such trappings have inevitably become a prison for Lily, and one of her stepfather Mark’s making. Following the death of her father, she (and her mom) are beneficiaries of Mark’s wealth, yet also confined by it. He forces decisions upon them without their consent. They are spoken to, not in conversation with. Their lives are not theirs to control. Mark (Paul Sparks, “Midnight Special”) creepily materializes throughout the house, juicing greens before retiring upstairs where the pulsing whoosh of his rowing machine can be overheard in each and every room. Taking a page from Blumhouse Productions, the film is almost entirely set in this house. The geography and limits of its sprawl provide a map of Lily’s psychology. The sense of being trapped there is a microcosm of the sensation of being trapped in her life. In a bizarre twist of fate, Amanda finds freedom in her imprisonment.

Amanda, Lily’s former friend and recent tutee, intuits Lily’s hatred for Mark and offhandedly suggests they kill him. What transpires is whip smart, darkly funny (“What am I going to tell my dad?” “Wear a hat.”), surprising, and surprisingly entertaining. Amanda is shown playing online poker and oversized chess. She doesn’t have a tell because emotions do not register across her face or body. “I don’t have any feelings. Ever . . . It just means I have to work a little harder to be good.” But what is truly revelatory is how self-possessed and transparent she is, always saying exactly what she means. By contrast, Lily almost never says what she means. She’s a Westchester WASP, who, while she may feel things, never talks about what’s bothering her. Even Mark has adopted the robotic mantra of “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.” The film offers Amanda’s diagnosis straight away, but Lily’s psychology is more opaque and mysterious.

I read that writer and director Cory Finley originally conceived of Thoroughbreds as a stage play, but then decided to tell the story with all the tools cinema affords. These playful flourishes are evident in Erik Friedlander’s score, pitch perfect musical cues, and Lyle Vincent’s camera work. Vincent makes slick work with a steadicam that effectively maintains unshakeable, observational distance from the characters, who are likewise coolly detached and disaffected. There are countless scenes in which the camera — as unmoving as their emotions — frames every character together in the shot, and then quickly shifts focal point and perspective pulling the background character into sharp focus and blurring the foregrounded character. It’s a brilliant cinematic touch that informs so much about how these characters perceive and relate to those around them.

Finley has created a teen film without any of the traditional markers of teen filmdom. Amanda and Lily — played to perfection by Olivia Cooke (“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl”) and Anya Taylor-Joy (“Morgan”) — are never seen attending school or visiting shopping malls. There is no gushing over boys or gossiping about losing one’s virginity. Instead, they are laser-focused on hatching a homicidal plot, establishing airtight alibis, and perfecting the fake crying technique. There is one high school party, but it serves only as a transitional setup to introduce a key third party into the mix. And yet, the movie still has something profound and honest to say about the teen experience, all the while deliciously satirizing said experience.

The film expertly plays with the horror of being a teenage girl and also the fear they seem to instill in others. Having been one (and now admittedly terrified of them), I can attest there is nothing scarier. The film is of course about wealth and ownership and the value society places on (animate and inanimate) objects, but is also obliquely commenting on the likelihood of every seventeen-year-old girl being a bit of a sociopath. Mark calls out Lily’s lack of empathy and inability to see someone else’s point of view. Everyone in her orbit is characterized as little offshoots of consciousness, and one could argue that lack of recognition of the personhood of others is more often an indicator of being a self-centered myopic teen as opposed to an actual mental health issue.

During test prep, Amanda quite rightly notes that whenever “ambivalent” is a choice, it’s always the correct answer. She also claims, “The only thing worse than being incompetent or being unkind or being evil is being indecisive.” Life is not always so definitive, but when it comes to this film, I’m neither ambivalent nor indecisive. What’s truly horrifying is just how much I loved it, and any dubiety surrounding my enjoyment comes from what exactly that says about me. Thoroughbreds for the win/place/show.

Collet-Serra and Neeson conveniently trade their adventurous transportation mode on a plane (as featured in their forgettable skyline actioner, “Non-Stop”) and rechristens the same kind of sluggish momentum aboard a speeding commuter train. Although The Commuter is not what one would label an absolute train wreck, Neeson’s ragged everyman out to draw blood in a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game is nothing other than the repetitive shtick that Neeson has been doing so well since “Taken” wowed audiences ten years ago.

Michael McCauley (Neeson) is the typical hard-working family man that dotes on his loved ones. McCauley, an ex-cop-turned-decade-old veteran insurance salesman, has undergone the monotonous daily routine of schlepping to work via the Metro-North train into Manhattan. Unfortunately for Mike the money is tight due to big time mortgage woes and his child’s pricey education. Still, McCauley’s determination to faithfully partake in the drudgery of insurance work is an obvious necessity needed to keep his clan financially afloat. However, Mike McCauley soon receives an alarming wake-up call when he is inexplicably fired from his employer, leaving him in a more precarious position than he already was.

While disillusioned about his unemployed status, McCauley is approached on the train by a strange woman named Joanna (Vera Farmiga, “The Conjuring 2”) with a mysterious proposition for the recently laid off working stiff. Joanna’s challenge to McCauley is both beneficial and risky for the ex-insurance man — find a passenger named Prynne and for his efforts he gets a payoff of $100,000.00. Additionally, the incentive for the harried McCauley to carry out his search is further complicated by the revelation of his wife (Elizabeth McGovern, “Woman in Gold”) and son (Dean-Charles Chapman, “Before I Go to Sleep”) being kidnapped to ensure that McCauley is properly focused and carries out his required commitment to completion.

And so the stone-faced Neeson goes into his signature statuesque form that we have seen countless times before. Exaggerated fist fights, hanging out of windows, feisty encounters with fellow passengers, ducking and dodging shady operatives — all performed on a speedy train heading down the symbolic tracks of manufactured treachery. McCauley is pounded and pressured by the corruptible obstacles that are thrown his way, but hey . . . the desperate undesirables that purchased his services want what is theirs and are pulling the strings hard to get their family man to solve their predicament.

There is nothing refreshingly intriguing or distinctively dire about using the concept of a speeding train as the confined setting for the foundation of the film’s psychological edginess. Sure, the dynamics of random train passengers commuting from point A to point B could have registered effectively, tapping into the curiosities, cynicism and mystique of the traveling masses. Sadly, however, the commonplace script cobbled together by screenwriters Byron Willinger, Philip de Blasi and Ryan Engle skips all that and merely chugs along the rails with all the recycled thrills of an arbitrarily orchestrated Neeson-led pot-boiler.

Nonetheless, the gritty, avid Neeson fans (of which there are surprisingly many) will probably still blindly embrace the excitable yet formulaic premise of The Commuter without much resistance, as the one-time Oscar-nominated actor (“Schindler’s List”) seems quite motivated by the moody material. And although he is going through his usual action thriller motions, he does them well and does not disappoint.