Jaume Collet-Serra directs Liam Neeson, Vera Farmiga and Jonathan Banks in this high concept thriller where a former detective must find a mystery passenger on his train home under the edict of a shadowy conspiracy.

The 39 Stops. Whenever Neeson has to employ his ageing, shovel-like hand to wallop a goon or grab hold of a whirring piece of undercarriage, this Friday night flick is perfectly satisfactory. Whenever it tries to be a glossy Hitchcock it is bafflingly awkward, and bafflingly awkward takes up two thirds of the run time. Lacking the lunatic logic of Non-Stop, where things escalated exquisitely but always with an in the moment cause and effect, this is genuinely difficult to make any heads or tails of. I’m sure if you sat down with a piece of paper you could join up all the twists, justify all the silly… but, put bluntly, there has to be a million simpler, containable, less attention bringing ways to find and kill a secret witness.

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