The Friends of Eddie Coyle

I'm one of those old farts that will tell you that the best decade for film was the 1970s. It was when studios gave free rein to innovative directors, before focus groups were the standard way of doing things, CGI was just a glimmer in some computer genius's eye, and when box office receipts weren't printed in the newspapers like baseball standings. "It was all about the music," so to speak.

And then there's nothing quite like a 70s crime drama: gritty, unsentimental, casually violent, and resting in a huge gray area where no one can tell who the good guy is. One of the more respected of those films is The Friends of Eddie Coyle, from 1973, which had languished in limbo until a recent DVD release from the Criterion Collection.

Robert Mitchum is the title character. Mitchum's acting in his middle years was something to behold (along with Farewell, My Lovely). His craggy hang-dog face, bass rumble of a voice, and slight stoop made you conjure up a life of hard times just looking at him. And in this film the character had done some hard time. A fringe player in the Boston crime scene, Mitchum's Coyle is a procurer of guns for some bank robbers. He's facing a rap in New Hampshire for transporting stolen whiskey, so he is having a conversation with a U.S. Treasury agent (Richard Jordan) hoping for some kind words to the judge before sentencing. He offers to give up the gun dealer he's working with.

Meanwhile we see the bank robbers in action. Years before Billy Bob Thornton and Bruce Willis in Bandits, these guys start the robbery in the bank manager's home, taking his family hostage. The robberies (we see two of them) are filmed in breathtaking precision by director Peter Yates.

In between these two plot threads is the shadowy figure of Peter Boyle as a saloon owner who is also of the criminal element and is also talking to Jordan. Even though this film is thirty-six years old I won't say anymore, since it was out of circulation a long time and it was such a pleasure to see a film that was completely unpredictable from minute to minute.

Yates' work is impressive, as there isn't a wrong shot in the film. The screenplay, by Paul Monash, is also a gem, with some great dialogue, particularly coming out of the mouth of Mitchum and the gun dealer, played by Stephen Keats. The script is based on a novel by George V. Higgins, so I'm not sure who gets the ultimate credit, but there are some absolute pearls.

You'll know it's a seventies film by the ending, which offers no satisfaction to those who are fed on the conventions of multiplex films today. Two character walk away from each other, one of them holding a secret from the other, who has a sense of what that secret is but won't act on it. It kind of summarizes an era.