The Friends of Eddie CoyleNo honor among thieves; if there is one axiom in The Friends of Eddie Coyle, it is this. Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum) is a career crook--low on the totem pole--but as observed by Detective Dave Foley (Richard Jordan), he gets around more than anyone. Eddie's latest game is to cajole a young gun runner named Jackie Brown (Steven Keats) into keeping him supplied with hardware for his connections, a group of crooks performing skillful bank heists, and disposing of the guns after use. Eddie's bigger problem is that he's been denied an appeal to dodge going into the joint for a truck job a while back. Little by little, Eddie's desperate actions to stay out of the slammer seals his fate.
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Set in Boston, Massachusetts--and the surrounding areas--The Friends of Eddie Coyle is predominated with unsavory characters, criminals and turncoats, informants and assassins. While Eddie may be our protagonist, he's not altogether a likable guy. His first interaction with Jackie is one of browbeating and bullying, under the auspices of trying to teach the young smuggler a few valuable lessons Eddie learned the hard way. For instance, Eddie recalls the story of when he had botched a job, and he was "gifted" with another set of knuckles; that is, the goons who came by to punish Eddie did so by sticking his hand in a drawer and kicking it closed. Violent...harsh...but the real problem is that Eddie never really learned his lesson. He plays like he did, but it's pretty clear that Eddie has been hustling for, well, probably all his life. Maybe this kind of life is all Eddie knows, but if that's true, it's a shame he's not better at it. Caught some time back for carrying a truck full of stolen goods for his fellow rogue, Dillon (Peter Boyle), instead of ratting him out, Coyle took the case to trial, and is now under the gun to try to convince some prosecutor up in New Hampshire to let him get out of jail. Eddie's only real contact in this is Foley, who pays crooks to rat out on other crooks. Dillon happens to be one of Foley's frequent patrons...or is it the other way around? Eddie's bad luck mirrors his bad judgment; when his fellow ne'er-do-wells start to get wise to Eddie after he feeds Foley a fall guy, and then another similar situation falls into Foley's lap...well, things look pretty bad for old Eddie Coyle, and his "friends" don't seem to go the distance anymore.
Directed by Peter Yates and adapted from the novel by the same name by George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a tough, unsentimental look at street-level crime and the methodology and business practices of gun runners, bank robbers, informants, and even hitmen. Watching the professionals work--even when they screw up--it is as if these felonies were day jobs, and they perform them as though they were just part of their own kind of economic system, with their own rules of operation. Take Jackie when he meets up with a young kid to get some M-16s: when the kid in his car tells him to "drive up the hill" (into the dark woods to meet two men with machine guns who know Jackie's carrying a lot of money), he turns the tables, forcing the kid to go get the guns, setting up a defensible position. Sure, it turns out to be a good deal of paranoia, but as Jackie observes, it's a hard life, but it's a lot harder if you're stupid. And as Jackie also observes, his biggest problem is that he's a nice guy...simply put, nice guys don't survive in the really real grim and gritty underworld of Boston, Mass. Frankly, even not-so-nice guys don't get far if they make dumb mistakes. Even the mistakes that people like Eddie make might not seem like much, but when involved with a group who thrive on criminal activity, and in circles where it's nothing to throw someone under the bus if you can keep from doing time--unless it means getting whacked--I wouldn't put much faith in what the other guy tells you. And when the chips are down and you're facing time at the end of your days, knowing who is really a friend...and who is "something else"...can make the difference between life and death.
Recommended for: Fans of a tense cops-'n'-crooks crime drama, filled with deception and characters you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley...heck, even on a brightly lit street.
Directed by Peter Yates and adapted from the novel by the same name by George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a tough, unsentimental look at street-level crime and the methodology and business practices of gun runners, bank robbers, informants, and even hitmen. Watching the professionals work--even when they screw up--it is as if these felonies were day jobs, and they perform them as though they were just part of their own kind of economic system, with their own rules of operation. Take Jackie when he meets up with a young kid to get some M-16s: when the kid in his car tells him to "drive up the hill" (into the dark woods to meet two men with machine guns who know Jackie's carrying a lot of money), he turns the tables, forcing the kid to go get the guns, setting up a defensible position. Sure, it turns out to be a good deal of paranoia, but as Jackie observes, it's a hard life, but it's a lot harder if you're stupid. And as Jackie also observes, his biggest problem is that he's a nice guy...simply put, nice guys don't survive in the really real grim and gritty underworld of Boston, Mass. Frankly, even not-so-nice guys don't get far if they make dumb mistakes. Even the mistakes that people like Eddie make might not seem like much, but when involved with a group who thrive on criminal activity, and in circles where it's nothing to throw someone under the bus if you can keep from doing time--unless it means getting whacked--I wouldn't put much faith in what the other guy tells you. And when the chips are down and you're facing time at the end of your days, knowing who is really a friend...and who is "something else"...can make the difference between life and death.
Recommended for: Fans of a tense cops-'n'-crooks crime drama, filled with deception and characters you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley...heck, even on a brightly lit street.