The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)

Sick Product of a Sick System

Beautiful, moving film.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

What this is not, is a super slick, fast moving, sexy and violent cops and robbers movie - there's not even a car chase and this from the man that made Bullitt. What this is, is a very low key, believable look at downtown crime in 70s US and a faded Robert Mitchum struggling to survive in his later years and avoid a spell inside. And of course to do this he has to call in some of his 'friends' and do a little more crime. He struggles a bit in the part but this might be Yates lack of direction which will also become evident in The Deep. Within the environment of a dirty Boston and even dirtier pals this is all fine. Steven Keats in his first film is fantastic as the ultra laid back gun runner, Jackie Brown and the ever reliable Peter Boyle has a central role of the barman who notices things and is not afraid to pass on information, a year before Young Frankenstein. The way Boyle moves around in the makes you think he's already practising for that role. No sex and violence or splashy effects then but simply a good wild crime movie told from an unusual angle, the bottom.

Dear Peter Yates,you made an edgy film that was true to the book by George.V.Higgins. The Friends of Eddie Coyle is about a bunch of crooks squealing on each other to escape jail sentences. The film is mostly entertaining dialog. The people (actors), places or events are not given too much space. The characters and the plot develops almost entirely through the sparse but often realistic and witty dialog. The film is set in a a male world. There is a lot of machismo. For example, a couple of the crooks casually discuss a woman's vagina. Someone like Tarantino would have tried to emphasize the best dialogs if he had directed this film. What I mean is that most directors would have tried to create a huge event if they had dialogs like the ones in the movie. But your directing style is unromantic and sparse. It was original and faithful to the book. The tension is caged in because of which the film never really rises above a certain level of entertainment. The gangsters in the film are total losers without any honor. They would rat each other out and kiss establishment ass in a second. Norman Mailer expressed surprise for the book - "that so good a first novel was written by the fuzz." I have not watched another gangster flick like The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Robert Mitchum was effortlessly brilliant as Eddie Coyle - a small time gangster who is on his way down. Well done, Peter.Best Regards, Pimpin.(10/10)

Hard to write a logline for this: Tired criminal betrays his fellow workers, and is betrayed back. To death.First up - Mitchum is the greatest. Woo! Nobody does it better. Second, '70s US urban grit is the greatest film atmosphere.The story wanders around, like the best film noir, and the characters and the corruption are so compelling you can't help following.Mitchum has a loving relationship with a plain old Irish girl, Sheila - pity they didn't drill into that. This is really all about the acting, and there are some great actors on display, but hardly any women. So it's not complete, but well worth a view.

This could be called one of the great neo-noirs of the 1970s. This will prove to be a strange opening sentence for this review as I will devote most of it to discussing why I don't think this film is really a "noir"at all. Noir- for all of its "grit"- is a romantic genre. The Noir anti-hero commits, in one way or another, a transgression in order to achieve transcendent love and passion, the hope of realizing the sublime. The noir protagonist is, then, truly an "anti-hero," or even "tragic hero." He has the potential for greatness, for sublimity, but this fate, by its very potential, is derailed due to some "tragic flaw" that is part and partial of the character's potential for greatness. Eddie Coyle, the ubiquitous main character and a small-time Boston gun-runner, has no potential for greatness. Judged simply by his actions, he's just a scum-bag in a world of scum-bags. That we come to both care for him and accept his fate with an almost cynical (in the classical Greek sense) acceptance is a major reason why this is such a great, and I think unique, work. It's greatness comes, if we want to get auteur-istic about it, not from the director or writer, but from the star, Robert Mitchum. Mitchum has long been amongst my favorite Hollywood performers, but I never knew he was capable of a performance like this. Few ever have been. Without the "showiness" of most celebrated Hollywood actors- say late period Dustin Hoffman or Jamie Foxx- Mitchum invents Coyle. He invents him more than the writer. This is a (rare in film) example of the performer as "auteur". If almost any other actor had played Coyle- as written- I think he could have come off as such a worthless slime-ball that most would be tempted to ask "why am I watching a movie about this pathetic, boring loser?" But Mitchum instills in Coyle a capacity for observance- for something akin to, though not identical with, empathy. He is, as Mitchum embodies him, someone who has suffered for his courage (which should not, in this case, be equated with honor) enough that he sees the fear and suffering in others, and he knows how to use it. But ultimately, he just doesn't want himself to suffer that much again. In this way, Mitchum makes Coyle almost a tragic, though not "noir"-ish(!)- figure, and this film one of profound pessimism. Coyle is humanity. In daring to face reality, he learns its horrific nature, and will do anything to escape it. But once understood, the real is the only real. We are trapped. Another note, the film has a brilliant sense of place. It captures not only Boston, but low-life New England in general, perfectly. I lived in the New England states for much of my teens and twenties. For me it was, especially in those months known for "Fall foliage!", a landscape of death and decay, though some claim to find it beautiful. This film transported me from Cali back to that wintry slum. I both admire it and resent it for this.