The Friends of Eddie Coyle

Year: 1973
Genre: Crime Thriller
Director: Peter Yates
Stars: Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan, Steven Keats, Alex Rocco, Joe Santos
Production: Paramount Pictures

The grizzled and tired Eddie Coyle (Mitchum) sits opposite a young man (Keats) at a diner. It's a tableaux we've seen plenty of times before; two people exchanging information back and forth; tit-for-tat. Yet there's something mesmerizing about the two actors on the screen. Maybe it's the fact that both characters are unsure of whether to trust the other. Maybe it's the camera which dances at a distance before listening intently to Coyle's story of his broken knuckles; the reason they call him "fingers". Maybe it's the natural magnetism of the actors. Maybe it's all three.

French Connection just wants a hug!

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is full of intimate moments like these, immediately differentiating itself from the exhausting grandeur of The Godfather (1972) and the frenzied mis en scene of The French Connection (1971). It's a crime thriller that lets the audience squirm under the pressure of its paranoia. In the center of the tempest is the distrusting Coyle who slowly realizes he's in a den of snakes.

Coyle is only a few days from  his sentencing in New Hampshire and expects a two-year sentence for driving a truck full of contraband for a friend (Boyle). In order to avoid a stiff sentence, Coyle deals information to the wily agent Foley (Jordan) while simultaneously buying up guns as a middleman for a group of trusting bank robbers. Young Jackie (Keats) the aforementioned young man is the one Coyle buys from. Who will Coyle fink on? Who will be outed as the stool pigeon in this web of deceit? Will Coyle get his sentence lessened or will he pay the ultimate price for his transgressions.

Think of this as our confessional

The bank robbers in question (Rocco and Santos) make a habit of kidnapping bank managers and holding their families hostage in exchange for compliance. Within the time frame of the first robbery we as the audience become voyeuristic accomplices peering between tree branches and nervous POV shots. These early scenes set the tone making everything from Keat's open air sub-machine gun purchase to Coyle's quaint New England kitchen seem claustrophobic. As the film progresses and the fates of all involved becomes crystallized, we're invited rather glumly to watch Eddie's world come crashing down. 

Despite its outlook and subject matter, Friend of Eddie Coyle is neither overtly violent or cynical. The story never treats our protagonist as a criminal or a stoolie but rather as a last vestige for a dying way of life. Due partially to harsh lessons in the past, he takes pride and pays attention to the details of his work. The results of his years of overextending himself in the service of an unseen master allowed him a bourgeois existence on par with any working-class stiff. With that existence threatened, he tries everything within his power to keep it, to no avail.

Many have cited Friends of Eddie Coyle as Robert Mitchum's strongest performance. While I personally would give that distinction to the downright scary Harry Powell in The Night of the Hunter (1955), there's no denying his performance is the stalwart center of a story populated with opportunistic scoundrels. One would argue Mitchum was among the last of the Golden-Age Hollywood screen legends and his prestige created in aura of dignity around the character.

Whitey Bulger 2011

The last scene of the film involves Peter Boyle's Dillon character and Foley callously talking about transpiring events. It's worth noting in preparation for the role, Mitchum had pursued a meeting with Irish Mob boss Whitey Bulger. The character Eddie was loosely based on one of Bulger's old associates, Billy O'Brien whose murder was never solved. Could Bulger have something to do with it? After all, in 1997 it was discovered that Bulger had in-fact acted as an FBI informant against the Patriarca crime Family. Without giving too much away, Bulger's relationship with the FBI has parallels to the events in the film. A sad case of fiction imitating truth.

Final Grade: B-