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Rating: - Boston as it really was
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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