The Coppers Are Always With Us-When City Hall Went Amok And Made The Trains Late-Liam Neeson’s “The Commuter” (2018)-A Short Film Review   

DVD Review

By Bart Webber

The Commuter, starring Liam Neeson, 2018    

[The constant reader may have noticed a rather long absence of my name from the lists here at Growing Up Absurd In The 1950s. That same reader also knows, or should know, that I was one of the founder members of the sister publication, American Left History, back in the mid-1970s when it was a hard copy publication created at least in part to “save” the late Pete Markin. Pete a guy who got a lot of us into writing, to appreciate the written word, back in the old neighborhood, the Acre neighborhood in growing up in the 1950s North Adamsville south of Boston. Pete the guy who projected the crazy idea, and other ideas that we though were crazy at the time when all we cared about was girls, cars, girls and how to get into their pants, that a new breeze was coming through the land. A time when we would turn the world upside down and in the process give working class, damn, poor ass guys like us a shot at something. He made good on that promise for a while dragging us in his huge wake getting us out for varying periods of time to the Summer of Love, 1967 out in Frisco and all that happened afterward.

That was just a little dream for Pete though because not so much later the Vietnam dragon lady called him, as it did for me and a bunch of those same poor ass working class guys from the Acre who couldn’t figure out a way to get of the draft. Vietnam turned Pete’s dreams into nightmares and his crazy ideas got the better of him when the high tide ebbed and he finally figured that rather than a newer world we were going to get the same fucking over that our parents and grandparents and before even when most of them came out of starving hungry looking for bread Ireland on the “famine ships.” Pete fell down, fell down hard and despite whatever money you would want to have bet then was the first to go under the good green earth.

Maybe strangely since the mid-1970s the core of the old neighborhood boys, the corner boys we called ourselves, kept themselves intact, didn’t fall down maybe seeing what happened to Pete and have lived to fight another day. Now it looks like I will be joining beloved bastard Pete if what the doctors say is true. I have a few rare and spreading cancers which will do me in eventually. The last year or so I have mainly been in one chemo therapy or another, so I have not really been in the mood or condition to do much. But of late the desire to write, the desire that Pete drilled into our brains to flow with words has been upon me. I will write as long as I can and as hard as I can. Thanks Pete.]   

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Somebody once said the cops will always be with us meaning that despite the changes in regimes, hell even changes in forms of government somebody always has to guard the loot, keep those in charge from the clawing hands of the unruly masses. (An old wag from the Acre whose family was filled with overweight coppers would add guard the donut shop coffee and crullers as well.) True or not doing that task may actually lead to learning some useful skills if you are ever conned by some come hither dame into playing “hit man” on a fast-moving Metro heading out of New York City. That the case with one Matt Murphy, retired copper and subsequently retired insurance sales man who needed all that copper muscle memory allowed in the film under review The Commuter starring versatile action actor Liam Neeson (now in some bad odor for racially-charged remarks from many years ago about killing a black man in revenge for a rape of a friend who strangely in this film had a serious knock down drag out fight leading to death of a black man who was a paid hit-man-by vocation not by guile with Liam’s character Matt.)        

In the old neighborhood, an Irish Catholic neighborhood filled with the working poor, the indigent and the riffraff, the bottom-feeders who locate there for the easy if sparse pickings those corner boys mentioned in the bracketed introduction above loathed the cops who made our lives hell and who would harass us, take us down to the station for what they called “general principles.” That despite an overload of coppers in all our families-the routine being among Irish family sons a breakdown something like this- one son a priest, with the vocation my grandmother called it with glee, one a gangster doing time in stir on at least one occasion and one a copper getting fat on those guarded coffee and crullers and whatever other graft they could hustle (among the girls one for the nunnery, one with the vocation distaff side also filling my grandmother with glee). That attitude never changed and while most of us have had a long term “truce” with the coppers except maybe for political offenses that is still true. (I haven’t talked to my older brother Larry in about twenty years once I found out he was the guy on the North Adamsville Police Department who was in charge of keeping young black boys from stopping at Adamsville Beach for “general principles”.)    

Still whatever they learn at the Police Academy and on duty must have some value as it did for Matt when he wound up being the “savior” while commuting busting up a bad guy City Hall cabal in the process. The usual corrupt City Hall operation depends on everybody keeping quiet whether they are in on the deal or not. If not then they have to fall down as was the case here. That is where the coppers, not all the coppers but the bad apples as the police press agent flak-catcher would have it, have to keep the unruly mob at bay-or dead. In this case dead. Except there was a slip-up, or rather two. A girl relative of the guy who had to fall down was present when the coppers tried to see if he could fly and she had grabbed the hard-drive proof that guys up to and including people in the Mayor’s office were skimming every dime they could skim for their “retirement.” Including a bad apple cop who was Matt’s old partner when they were working the Dunkin’ Donut beat. Set Matt up knowing he was cash poor and knowing that he had just been let go from his crumb-bum insurance agency for not selling enough life insurance to keep them happy. Couldn’t close the deal anymore, the kiss of death in selling anything from insurance to vacuum cleaners.      

Where does the commuter part come in? Well that is easy once Matt started making serious dough after leaving the cops he and his lovely two point three child family moved to the leafy suburbs, moved outside the crime-ridden, noisy scary city, moved to Tarrytown and the endless commute to earn that daily bread downtown. That is why Matt was “picked” for the job, picked to be the “hit man” ex-cop who could figure out how to ferret out the witness who saw her cousin fall down and who had the hard drive which would have sent everybody to prison. Did I mention that they sealed the deal with a kiss-the kiss of death to his wife and two pint three kids if he fumbled, if he fell down.

But of course Matt wouldn’t once he had his down payment and the prospect of a hundred grand for light work. Matt had lost his edge though because he made about six mistaken identifications before he got the right person-got the witness from hell. Those off-hand deaths just the price, the overhead to make sure his family was okay. After getting that witness and promising her safety all hell broke loose once the City Hall guys knew where he was. They made him an APB psycho holding some fellow commuters hostage complete with SWAT teams and half the cops in Westchester County. Matt came through though and at least one bad guy, gal actually fell down. The lesson to be learned here though in stay a million miles away from the trains, maybe two million. Ride a bike or take Uber or Lyft. And remember despite this Matt’s actions stay away from the coppers, far away.