The Friends of Eddie Coyle
Tags: neo noir

Plot synopsis:
Eddie Coyle (a.k.a. "Eddie Fingers") is an aging delivery truck driver for a bakery. He is also a low-level gunrunner for a crime organization in Boston, Massachusetts. He is facing several years in prison for a truck hijacking in New Hampshire set up by Dillon, who owns a local bar. Coyle's last chance is securing a sentencing recommendation through the help of an ATF agent, Dave Foley, who demands that Coyle become an informer in return. Unbeknownst to Coyle, Dillon is an informer for Foley.
A gang led by Jimmy Scalise and Artie Van has been pulling a series of bank robberies in broad daylight using hostages, Coyle having supplied them with pistols. Another gun runner, Jackie Brown, is supplying Coyle, who demands more guns from him as the gang ditches their pistols after each job and needs a fresh supply for each heist. Jackie goes to great lengths to get Coyle what he needs while taking an order from a young hippie couple shopping for machine guns (actually M16 rifles). Coyle finds out about the machine guns when he picks up the pistols from Jackie and offers to set up Jackie for Foley to avoid jail. In a dramatic scene at a train station's parking lot, arriving to deliver the machine guns, Jackie is arrested by Foley and his team.
Coyle meets with Foley and argues that he has fulfilled his end of the deal, but Foley claims his superiors don't agree. More information is required from Eddie or else he'll still go to prison. A bank worker has been killed during a heist by the Scalise-Van crew and they are now wanted for murder. In desperation, Coyle decides to inform on his friends Scalise and Van, but by then Foley, acting on a tip supplied by Dillon, has already caught the gang in the act of executing a heist. Foley tells Eddie his information offer was too late and he therefore cannot make a deal for leniency.
Meanwhile, Dillon meets with an intermediary of "The Man", the mob boss, in the parking lot of an MBTA station. Dillon is eager to finger Coyle for betraying Scalise and Van, but it turns out the Mob already have Coyle's name as Scalise believes Eddie snitched on him. Dillon convinces the intermediary that he was afraid that Coyle was going to inform on him to stay out of jail. Dillon frames Coyle for informing on Scalise and Van, confirming the Mob of Coyle's guilt. "The Man" wants Coyle done away with immediately, by nightfall, and offers the contract to Dillon because of Dillon's reputation as a "good" hit man. Dillon insists on $5,000 upfront for killing Coyle. The intermediary tells Dillon he will get back to him after talking to "The Man".
A despondent Coyle arrives at Dillon's bar, knowing that prison is now inevitable. While Eddie gets drunk, he and Dillon discuss the arrest of Scalise and Van. Dillon then takes a phone call from the mob confirming the contract and the upfront payment. To set up the hit, which has to be carried out that night, Dillon tells Eddie that the phone call was from a friend who can't make it to the Boston Bruins hockey game that night. Dillon offers to treat Eddie to a night on the town, taking him to dinner and the Bruins game to "forget your troubles."
At the Boston Garden, Eddie is becoming increasingly drunk. After he leaves to use the restroom and get another round, Dillon is joined by a young man he has told Eddie is his "wife's nephew" who will be joining them at the game, but who is late. In reality he is a young hood who is being groomed by Dillon and will be in on the hit. When Eddie returns to the seats, he is sloppy drunk and sentimental. He soliloquizes about Bobby Orr, the hockey great who helped lead the Bruins to two Stanley Cup victories in 1970 and 1972 (the latter the year the film was made in Boston).
"Can you imagine being a kid like that? What is he, 24 or something? Greatest hockey player in the world. Number four – Bobby Orr. Geeze, what a future he’s got, huh?"
Eddie has no future; he will soon be dead and the future belongs to the young hoodlum who is Eddie's potential replacement as a criminal associate of Dillon.
After the game, Dillon and the young hood exit the Garden with an inebriated Coyle as Dillon explains that he has arranged an assignation with a couple of girls in Brookline. Eddie is equivocal and tells Dillon he has parked his car in the South End. The "nephew" offers to give them a lift. In the car, Dillon asks a drunk and sleepy Eddie where his car is parked, but Eddie does not respond, having fallen asleep. Dillon gives instructions to the young hood on how to drive out of the city to Quincy. As Dillon explains the machinations of the hit and the young hood's payoff, the drunk Eddie sleeps in the front passenger seat; using a .22 caliber revolver, Dillon shoots Coyle inside the moving car. They leave the car containing Eddie's body outside a bowling alley on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester and split up.
In the final scene that underlines the bleakness of the story, Foley meets with Dillon at the Boston City Hall plaza and thanks him for giving him Scalise and Van. Foley is largely unconcerned that Dillon cannot tell him who murdered Coyle, leaving the impression that he knows Dillon is involved but remains too useful to pursue for the murder of a petty criminal such as Eddie Coyle.

Review: The friends of Eddie Coyle is one of the 1970's lost crime/cop movies of it's era which in all fairness deserves better treatment i.e. a nice restoration on DVD done in wide-screen would not go a miss!
The biggest draw back of the movie from a box office draw perspective is that lead actor Robert Mitchum's stardom was on the wain by 1973 and his main body of fans would not have liked the character that he played.
Well to start with the fact that it's different from the above mentioned movies.Robert Mitchums sleepy looking demeanor made him very believable as a worn out aging two time loser who can't face the prospect of more jail time was very good in his role.
In fact despite this some now believe that Bulger himself might have been an FBI informer too i.e. playing for both teams while enriching himself!Yes the movie does move slowly, but it is more than compensated with a pretty reasonable story and a fine list of American character actors who are very believable in their roles.
Alex Rocos is good as the lead crook, a baby faced Peter Boyle as an informer and the versatile Richard Jordan playing a bent FBI official top the cast along side Robert Mitchum.
There is also a shot of the old Boston Garden featuring an ice hockey match with the Boston Bruins in their heyday led by the legendary Bobby Orr. For anybody interested to see what Boston looked like in the early 70's with it's greasy spoons and neighbourhood bars check this one out.Many of the characters here are not likable at all, they are devious, manipulative, self centered and two faced, but I suppose it's true what they say "no honor amongst thieves!" It's not the greatest of films but not all that bad, it's well worth a watch for all of the above!.
It was during Mitchum's last hurrah, when he made interesting character studies like "Farewell, My Lovely." This story is a loser's tale, in the same vein as many of Paul Newman's best films, like "The Hustler" and "Nobody's Fool." Some audiences will have a hard time with the nature of the role because they expect a tough guy like Mitchum to kick into gear at any moment, but he never does because it's not that kind of movie.
Robert Mitchuim gives an outstanding performance as Eddie Coyle, a small-time Irish gangster who works both sides of the fence.
We're all aware of the antihero,well I think this movie has the quintessential "fantastic loser".Excuse me for coining a phrase but this group may go unnoticed otherwise.Along with movies like Fat City,Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (or just about every Warren Oates role)these characters may be the most interesting to watch,and Robert Mitchums performance in this movie has to be the best.Like a character that is hated but still championed it must have been hard to pull off a loser without the audience feeling overwhelming sympathy.I cannot believe when reading about Robert Mitchum that this movie is not mentioned.For me it is unquestionably his finest and most honest.Supporting roles,writing and direction all get high marks as well.One of the finest in a decade of masterpieces..
I think this film captures Boston and the lives of small time mobsters better than any other film.Elmore Leonard called the novel upon which the movie is based the best crime novel ever written.
A Disposable Man. Anyone who does not think Robert Mitchum is a serious actor has never seen The Friends Of Eddie Coyle.
You would think that Mitchum lived in Boston all his life.Playing the title role in The Friends Of Eddie Coyle, Mitchum so submerges his own personality that you forget in fact you are watching Robert Mitchum and you really think you are seeing the downfall of a man named Eddie Coyle.
When Mitchum rats out some old friends for a series of bank robberies where two people were killed, he's sealed his doom.The obvious comparison to make with this film is the John Ford classic, The Informer.
Also take note of Peter Boyle as the bartender/criminal, Richard Jordan as a really smarmy cop and Helena Carroll who has a few, but some really well played scenes as Mitchum's long suffering wife.The film was shot totally on location in the Boston area and I recognized quite a few locations from my travels there.
Some very interesting comments there about star Bobby Orr and the bright future he has in the world of hockey from a man whose world is about to crumble.The Friends Of Eddie Coyle is a classic from the Seventies one of the best films Robert Mitchum ever did and not to be missed, especially if one wants to see a different side of old rumple eyes..
Peter Boyle is simply fantastic in his role as a Whitey Bulger character combining hit-man, bartender, informer, and a friend of Eddie Coyle.
Coyle, played in grand loser style by Mitchum, is running out of time while looking at an inevitable 3-5 year prison stint for bootlegging liquor (an outdated crime if there ever was one).
Alex Rocco leads a band of bank robbers linked to Coyle who are making headlines as they take out banks left and right and Richard Jordan is a treasury agent who keeps intense links with underground figures who keep him in the know, including Boyle and Mitchum.
The Friends Of Eddie Coyle is simply one of the best true-to-life films I've ever seen and a movie so well made it's hard to believe it's such a sleeper.
Eddie Coyle, the ubiquitous main character and a small-time Boston gun-runner, has no potential for greatness.
Classic crime story featuring great performances, esp Mitchum as "working-class" hood whose life intersects with bank robbers, an aggressive cop and his informant.
But everyone else is utterly unlikeable, Peter Boyle as a bartender and mob functionary, Stephen Keats as a gun runner, and particularly Richard Jordan as an ice cold undercover cop ("Have a nice day").Mitchum is a desperate gun mule trying to work both sides of the fence by being an informer on the people he's working for.
This is one of Robert Mitchums's greatest performances and thats saying a lot.Eddie Coyle is a low end hood and C.I. trying to play both ends toward the middle.Great supporting cast including,Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan, and Alex Rocco{from Braintree Ma.} this is not an action crime film, this is a character study, the author of the book George v.
Higgins was a district attorney in Ma,and the dialog has an authenticity that other crime films don't have.But the biggest crime is that PARAMOUNT DOES NOT RELEASE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE ON DVD!Peter Yates directs the film in a subtle and real way.A true lost gem of the 1970's..
THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE is not a title that springs to immediate attention when we're discussing great Hollywood movies from the 70s but for a forgotten crime drama where not much happens it is very compelling .
A middle aged man Eddie "Fingers" Coyle involved with the Boston mob finds himself facing jail time and if he comes up with useful information for the local police department so what's he going to do ?
There's Dave Foley a Boston detective who's trying to put a lid on crime in the city and uses people in a completely disposable way to get results and perhaps most memorable of all there is Dillon played by Peter Boyle who is a mob hit man but will do anything to survive inside or outside of the law .
When violent action occurs it jars even more because it ends in an instant, with unsuspecting citizens walking or driving past who have no idea that something's been stolen, someone's arrested, someone's dead.Robert Mitchum's effortlessly modulated performance is a gift to the other actors; his generosity in underplaying Eddie Coyle's dim desperation enhances the power of the characters created by Peter Boyle, Steven Keats, Richard Jordan, Alex Rocco and Joe Santos, and gives the film a rare balance of distinctly different personalities.One small protest: the novel's been compressed, and the nature of the final betrayal altered.
Peter Yates has directed such excellent movies as `Bullitt,' `Breaking Away' and `The Friends of Eddie Coyle.'  `The Friends of Eddie Coyle?'  The film isn't as well known as the other two, but it may be Yates' best work.In this delightfully complex crime drama, Robert Mitchum stars as a small-time Quincy, Mass., hood who is selling guns at the same time he's trying to beat a liquor transporting rap.
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)Peter Yates directed the better known Bullitt in 1968, the heyday of the new American film movement toward great realism, gritty location shooting, hard edged characters without redemption, and more open violence and sex.
Robert Mitchum as an aging, small time gun runner on his way to doing some jail time, anchors his scenes and makes the movie seem special.
In its story of cops and crooks, it shows how there can be dishonour among thieves, especially if you're an ageing sad sack like Robert Mitchums' Eddie Coyle, and will do just about anything to avoid doing any more time.
Easily one of the best crime dramas of the seventies (and maybe in American film history), Peter Yates' cinematic version of George Higgins' fine novel, The Friends of Eddie Coyle stands as a perfect example of the small, perfectly acted and executed story of wretched small-time hoods and the verminous criminal-justice types who chase them.I cannot find a substantial flaw in the story of Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum giving a superb performance), an aging thief who is the middleman between an apprentice-like gunrunner (a very tough Steven Keats) and a robbery crew (headed by the fine Alex Rocco).
The only whiz-bang is the occasional muscle car owned by the gunrunner or confiscated by the feds and driven by Jordan, easily the most cruel and contemptible "good guy" you'll see for a long time.It's all so real and acceptable watching Peter Boyle as a bartender who manipulates the feds to his benefit, Rocco hiding out between robberies and boasting to Coyle about how his girlfriend goes bottomless around the house ("All I gotta do is reach down there and off she goes!"), and Mitchum's Coyle, puffy and weary, an old Irish racist who acts like a dog that's been beaten too many times, but still has his teeth.
Although this heist movie is sprinkled with two stifling bank robberies and a frenetic parking lot double-cross, director Peter Yates (who got in an early career best directing Steve McQueen in 1968′s Bullitt) manages to cause a stir in the film via an introverted look at old-timing gangsters and the new wise guys.Robert Mitchum is the titular Eddie 'Fingers' Coyle.
The Friends of Eddie Coyle is set in Boston, Robert Mitchum, plays the title character Eddie'Fingers' Coyle a small time low life gun runner and hustler, who tries to avoid an eminent jail sentence, makes a deal with federal agent Richard Jordan in to giving evidence against his 'friends' who are in fact a team of bank robbers led by Alex Rocco, Co-Starring is Steven Keats who plays 'Jackie Brown' it is evident here that Tarontino appropriated that name for his film of the same name, Peter Boyle is another 'Friend' Dillon the bar man, who has a few 'Friends' himself who lends his talents to providing one with a shocking climax.
'The Friends of Eddie Coyle' is hands down easily one of Robert Mitchums best roles which is after many years of unavailability is finally available through the Criterion Collection..
We suspect that one day, when some Film Historian is giving a close scrutiny of the sum total of Mr. Peter Yates work, that he will rate THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE right up there next to the top of the list, right next to BREAKING AWAY!
My buddy, Schultz and I rate the top three Robert Mitchum films from this period as: FAREWELL MY LOVELY (as Phillip Marlowe), THE YAKUZA (seems to be mostly forgotten) and today's honoree and THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE.
Even those few times in the movie where someone takes a hot round, you don't even see much blood, and certainly not a lot of physical violence.Though the cinematography gets a little dark and murky towards the end, I thought overall the filming was just to my liking.
He is looking at a Stretch and is Desperate to get Free.Of Course, in the Cinema World and the Real World for that matter, the Odds are Stacked against Him. That is the Film's Concern and through the use of Gritty, Realistic Dialog, and Unfettered, Chilling Locations both Interior and Exterior, it Weaves its Downbeat Tale with Good Characters and Character Actors.Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan, and Steven Keats are there for Mitchum to interact as the Story Spirals to its Inevitable Conclusion.
After his last crime has him looking at a long prison sentence for repeat offenses, a low level Boston gangster (Robert Mitchum) decides to snitch on his friends to avoid jail time.While preparing for his role, Mitchum wanted to meet Whitey Bulger and was warned against it by Higgins.
Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum) is a small time hood in Boston who is about to be sent to jail.
The intricacies of a bank robbery (the buying and selling of the firearms, the precise staging and actions of the participants) are given more attention than the personalities involved, and that extends to "fink" Eddie Coyle, played by a too-solid Robert Mitchum.
Any viewer bringing those expectations to this movie will be sorely disappointed.If you can put those expectations aside, it's easier to appreciate one of Robert Mitchum's best performances, ably abetted by the supporting performances Richard Jordan, Peter Boyle, and Alex Rocco.Boston and it's nearby environs provide authentic locations and allow viewers to observe the non-glorified day to day world of blue collar, working class, low level criminals and the equally morally nebulous law enforcement community who co-exist in their world.Similar to The Departed, there are no "good guys" and no sympathetic bad guys to root for or against.
The movie depicts a true-to-life desperate world of survival through betrayals in the lower echelons of organized crime.If you've ever enjoyed a Robert Mitchum movie, then watch The Friends of Eddie Coyle to see perhaps his best performance..
Higgins, director Peter Yates' The Friends of Eddie Coyle takes pride in its authentic depiction of 1970s Boston, where Irish mobsters trade weapons and organise truck hijackings over a diner table.
It follows low-level criminal Eddie 'Fingers' Coyle, played by Robert Mitchum, as he faces a lengthy spell in prison for a crime organised by bartender associate Dillon (Peter Boyle).
"The Friends of Eddie Coyle" is just as much a character study as it is a crime film.
Although there are guns, criminals and gangsters, 'The friends of Eddie Coyle doesn't present itself as a violent film' as drama prevails over action scenes.
"The Friends of Eddie Coyle" plunges you into the Boston underworld, full of treacherous people, all playing each other for leverage; a genuine pit of snakes (Peter Boyle most of all).
Boston criminal Eddie 'Fingers' Coyle (Robert Mitchum) is in the mire, the cops have him bang to rights and he's facing a long stretch in the big house.
So I watched 1973's "The friends of Eddie Coyle", starring tough guy Robert Mitchum.
This movie stars Mitchum as Eddie "fingers" Coyle a gritty thug from the bad side of Boston.
What is real important here is the act of betrayal, and as long as the relationship between Peter Coyle and his friends is somehow ellipsed, the film's concept has no strength at all.In fact, it is hard to figure out what this movie is about until it has run a long time.
And, if you want to see him as a good ol' Boston gangster, watch a scene or two from The Friends of Eddie Coyle.
A matter of trust among conspiring criminals seems to be the theme of this dark, drab, very dreary story about Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum), an aging, haggard Boston hoodlum, trying to get out of a two-year sentence by making a deal with the local feds.
The atmosphere is unrelentingly grim and there's no-one involved who could be regarded as either heroic or glamorous.Eddie "Fingers" Coyle (Robert Mitchum) is a small time hood who's facing the prospect of a prison sentence after having been caught driving a truck of illegal liquor for his best friend Dillon (Peter Boyle).
In "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" we get a look at one of the least- glamorous underworlds ever committed to film, and Robert Mitchum is well-chosen for our guide.
Robert Mitchum, in one of his finest performances, is the worn out Eddie Coyle, a small-time crook looking for one last score, but getting involved with one too many sleazes.
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.
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.
Or did he?Hard edge crime drama set in the crime ridden street and swanky suburbs of Boston with Robert Mitchum as the desperate Eddie Coyle looking for a way out of the mess that he, because of his friends in the world of crime, finds himself in but only ending up getting in deeper instead.
If you are a fan of crime films and/or Robert Mitchum you may enjoy this movie.
Robert Mitchum was effortlessly brilliant as Eddie Coyle - a small time gangster who is on his way down.