In the 1973 Peter Yates film, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Robert Mitchum (Out of the Past, The Night of the Hunter) plays the aging title character who, after spending his life on the lower rungs of Boston's criminal underworld, is facing a prison stretch that stands between him and a long sought-after retirement. When he sees possible salvation in the form of a sentencing leniency recommendation from a federal agent in exchange for providing information about unlawful gun sales, the true nature of his associations becomes frighteningly clear.
Anyone who is well-versed in the storylines of classic-era film noir and early 1970s Mafia dramas will quickly realize that The Friends of Eddie Coyle exists in a dark landscape where all roads signs point to "This will not end well." The brilliance of this film, however, lies in the fact that it opens without a clear exposition, so that we the viewers are handed pieces of the puzzle through snippets of engaging dialogue sequences. Peter Yates's direction carries us through one clandestine meeting to another with a low-key, but nonetheless gripping style, so we find ourselves second-guessing the motivations of every person on the screen. Eddie Coyle has no actual friends, but neither does any other person onscreen. One of the most interesting sequences, in fact, involves a gunrunner, played by an underrated Steven Keats, struggling to maintain control when taking a delivery of five machine guns into the trunk of his car. This movie graces us with several white-knuckle moments in the form of bank robberies, illegal deals, and home invasions, but no special effects or explosions are needed to keep our attention. During my first viewing of this film today, I was so immersed by this no-frills production that I was almost afraid to blink.
Robert Mitchum's "Hollywood bad boy" past serves him well in The Friends of Eddie Coyle, and his wonderfully somnambulistic style of acting is instrumental in conveying Coyle's world-weariness during every moment that he is on the screen. Just as in the 1947 noir masterpiece, Out of the Past, Mitchum's character does not seem to be controlling his outcome as much as he seems to be gliding, as though on a moving airport walkway, to a fate that was predetermined a long time ago, and even his most assertive and tough-as-nails dialogue exchanges are marked with an air of resignation. Peter Boyle (Young Frankenstein), as a bar owner with both feet in the underworld, steps up to the plate with a sharp role and commands almost as much attention as Mitchum. Richard Jordan (Dune, The Hunt for Red October) is excellent as a player of other humans who keeps his own cards close to his chest.
This Criterion Blu-ray of The Friends of Eddie Coyle only has a couple of extras, but quality trumps quantity in this instance. The 2009 audio commentary track with Peter Yates is a pleasure, since the talkative director has no shortage of anecdotes and informative yarns about the filming. This package also includes one of the best Criterion booklets in the Collection, with the "They Were Expendable" essay by Kent Jones, and an excerpt from “The Last Celluloid Desperado”, a 1973 Rolling Stone magazine profile of Robert Mitchum.
The Blu-ray looks impressive, and the grit of early 1970s cinema comes across quite well. On the audio front, Dave Grusin's score sounds great, and the dialogue is crystal-clear.
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