Jason Sondhi

The Commuter is a charmingly impressive Nokia branded short, commissioned to tout the capabilities of the N8, the Finnish handset maker’s newest HD video phone. In that way it is a followup of sorts to Dot, the Aardman-produced stop-motion that recently made rounds in the blogosphere, and thus officially establishes a trend of good films from the cell phone giant.

The Commuter, like Dot, is shot entirely via the phone, but unlike its microscopic counterpart, this film will not wow  you with amazing visuals. It is a major triumph I suppose for a phone to produce a film that does not look distractingly bad however, and in that sense the film succeeds by passing such a low bar. Fortunately we don’t watch films for visual exclusively, so The Commuter‘s strong directing and cleverly executed chase sequence make up for its optical deficiencies.

Starring Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire fame and The Last Airbender infamy, the film is a comic romp through London as on the first day of work, Patel must struggle to make it in on time after his car gets booted by parking enforcement. The absurdity get racheted up a bit by automatic weapons and dapper dressed thugs. An extended chase, the film is brief enough at 7 minutes to sustain attention, and dynamic enough to impress.

The work is a nice commercial opportunity for the brothers Edward and Rory McHenry a filmmaking team whose bizarre feature film debut Jackboots on Whitehall (a WWII alternate-history starring puppets!) premiered on UK theater screens earlier in the month. Here they show a knack for portraying live-action as well, and perhaps definitively prove that the old adage is correct: doesn’t matter what you shoot on, just make a good film.