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Rating:  -
Mitchum, one of Hollywood's most underappreciated actors, knocks one out of the ballpark in this film. The only reason I can see that he wasn't nominated for an Oscar was because Mitchum was too rough for the delicate sensibilities of the industry bigwigs.
Rating: -
"Eddie doesn't rob banks...He's about this high in the bunch but he gets around more than any man I've ever seen," says Dave Foley (Richard Jordan), a baby-faced Boston cop about as amoral as the wiseguys he hunts. Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum) is a worn out, two-bit gunrunner. He provides untraceable revolvers when required. He draws the line at machine guns. Eddie is honorable in his way. He loves his family. He's just a low life who isn't all that shrewd. The fix he's in, because he can't take any more jail time, is what this superb Peter Yates' movie is all about.
"Look. I'm gettin' old, y'hear?" Eddie tells a young hood who deals in machine guns. "I spend most of my life hangin' around crummy joints with the punks drinkin' the beer, eatin' the hash an' hot dogs and watchin' the other people go off to Florida while I'm sweatin' how I'm goin' to pay the plumber. I done time when I stood up but I can't take no more chances. Next time it's goin' to be me goin' to Florida." Now he's facing more prison time for foolishly agreeing to drive a getaway car when he should have asked his friends some questions. He'll do just about anything to cut a deal for no jail time. He's nearly 50. He doesn't want his wife to go on welfare, doesn't want his three kids made fun of because their old man is doing time. He's squeezed by Dave Foley to inform...and Eddie decides he'll rat a little. He's too believing to understand he might be tagged for ratting big time. It's all betrayal, but Eddie doesn't really understand betrayal. All those friends of Eddie's make us wary every time we meet them: Scalise (Alex Rocco), who robs banks, sometimes violently; Jackie (Steve Keats), the dangerous dealer in stolen machine guns; Dillon (Peter Boyle), owner of a low-life bar who knows more about things than Eddie does.
The movie looks as hopeless as the Boston weather. It's the cold end of fall, filled with drab, chill days where parking lot asphalt is always wet. We're into Eddie's life in the low lane, where the anchors in the crummy strip malls are a tired Woolworth's and Barbo's Furniture Store. It's a lousy life and it belongs to Eddie Coyle. "Have a nice day."
Director Peter Yates sets up scenes -- an exchange of machine guns, a bank robbery, a family held hostage, a stakeout in a commuter train lot, a night on the town -- that are so naturally established that we might miss how skillfully they build the story and show us Eddie's life. We're never sure if things are as hopeless for Eddie as they seem. Yates keeps us on edge, and he adds layers of Eddie Coyle's sad and foolish trust.
This is one of Robert Mitchum's best performances. Mitchum still looks like he might be a tough guy, but his Eddie Coyle is a man who has had the force of his life wrung out of him. He's been in the life forever. He does the jobs others ask him to. He doesn't ask very many questions. He's just not smart enough. Mitchum takes all the hard edges off his usual persona and gives us an aging loser whose life is on the skids, and who doesn't understand just how badly off he is.
The Criterion release looks just fine. There is a commentary by Peter Yates.
Rating: -
Mitchum has the Boston accent down in this unbelievably tense, mythic story of a small-time con who tries to turn his life around. The accent is one of the most difficult to master. It takes an actor who appreciates the nuance of pure gesture, an eye roll or sigh, or the nearly inaudible word others might miss. As Eddie "Fingers" Coyle, Mitchum does more with his face than some do with their careers.
The film is true to George V. Higgins' scrappy thriller in which the man nobody knows becomes someone nobody wants to know. In characteristic form, Peter Yates keeps the action focused and the script spare with enough open space to draw the audience into an escalating drama.
While the movie is filled with allusions to great violence, and while there are brief periods of tension bordering on violence, THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE is not a violent film. Released in 1973, it is one of the last great crime films to eschew overt violence. The country was more intelligent then; perhaps less self-indulgent too.
It's fitting Criterion remastered and reissued it in this handsome edition, complete with a very engaging booklet of essays and some useful extras. While I felt the remastering left too much "flutter" in the frame, the gray-scale color-palette was true and the sound especially good -- a godsend in a movie in which most speak softly.
What is most ironic about THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE is its resonance with the state of many human relationships today in a country which has assumed some of the rain and soot of Eddie's world. The choices he confronts are those he'd rather skirt, because his options aren't especially hot.
Eddie just wants to put the past behind him and get on with his life. Like Terry Malloy or Ratso Rizzo, he dreams of clearing out of the urban jungle to another venue, distant from memories which might otherwise poison his remaining life or deplete whatever will he has left.
We have some good actors out there today, but Mitchum was a truly great actor who consistently assumed the lives of his characters with quiet command and finesse. It is ironic he doesn't appear onscreen as often as we expect, but onscreen or off, he infuses each frame with the character he invokes.
We are all Eddie Coyle at some point in our lives, and the universality of theme is part of the appeal of this quiet masterpiece. As for the Boston accent, few actors can pull it off. Nicholson butchered it completely in The Departed. But Mitchum has it down so well that its cadence reflects the vulnerability and quiet power of this fundamentally good man.
Both the character and film will haunt you long after the credits roll. Should you own it? It depends. Those who find deeper meaning in repeated viewing should buy it post haste, because the story and its underlying philosophy run deep. Still, the movie works equally well as a great story of a little man who wants to put his screw-ups behind and live a new life.
Sound familiar, guys?
Five wicked big stars.
Rating:  -
As a cinemaphile who was influenced from the 40's onward and placing my admiration among the "film noir" denizens to be somewhere between Bogie and McQueen, I have long considered Robert Mitchum to be my hero of choice.
With the abundance of high ratings on this film, I thought I had discovered a plum.
I was simply disappointed in the relevance of Mitchum in the movie. It was certainly no tour de force of his performing acumen. The supporting players were well cast but pretty much carried RM through the movie. The story was rich with curious personalities but Mitchum was was like a central bit part. The ending supported that condition. There was no sense of real Star Power. I would likely have passed on that selection had I known more.
Rating: -
My fondness for this film owes something to the fact that I witnessed some of the filming of "Eddie Coyle" in 1973 at Dorchester's Boston Bowl when I was 13. For 3 1/2 hours, I was mesmerized by Mitchum as he filmed a scene inside the bowling alley. This film is to my Bostonian soul a haunting representation of what the town and surroundings were like in the 1960's and 1970s. Don't expect "The Departed", "Mystic River" or "Good Will Hunting", they are entertaining but ultimately shallow reflections of Hollywood's version of working class Boston. "Coyle" is something different. A true work of art, in that Mitchum and Yates (and of course author George V. Higgins) were able to step outside of the packaged cliches and capture the essence of a time and place. Peter Yates' commentary is insightful. You perceive that he had a respect for the real life of working class Boston at that time and he was going to represent what he actually saw,felt and derived from Higgins' novel. Though a work of fiction this is akin to cinema verite in it's ability to get across the fates of characters in Boston before it became merely a "world class city", in Mayor Kevin White's rendering. Bravo to Criterion for re-introducing this important film.
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