A quick search will reveal that this is already being discussed in the Criterion Coming Soon and Discussion thread, also, the answer to your question can be found on the film’s page right here which also be found by doing a simple search.
Please search before starting new threads, everyone has been hammering this point, let’s start living up to it.
I know everyone’s started up a posse to avoid exact duplicates of topics being discussed, but is it really reasonable to limit the discussion of the film to a catch-all like the Coming Soon thread and then have nothing at all under Topics>The Friends of Eddie Coyle (which is where Maurice started up this thread)? That’s fine if that’s how it’s going to be done but if that’s the case it’s illogical for the site to be layed out so that each film is it’s own topic.
Great film with a fine performance by Mitchum. Just recently rewatched it. Has been showin up on cable recently.
Seen parts of it on cable years ago. The print/tape they were using was in terrible shape so I hope this version will do it justice.
PS
The novel is great- short and intense. True noir.
I dream of a world without threads.
Just one, large, unsearchable, incomprehensible forum ala Borges’ library.
That is my dream.
Coyle is great late career Mitchum, by the way.
there’s an article on it in the new film comment. great write-up. makes me want to see it.
This was #1 on my own personal wish list of films to be released on DVD. I have watched my VHS copy numerous times over the past two decades, so I’m very familiar with it. I highly recommend it, but it won’t be everyone’s cup of joe. How would I describe it…restrained, matter-of-fact, dour, and serious as hell from beginning to end, with an incredibly downbeat (but appropriate) finale. Precisely directed by Yates, with a crackerjack, practically all-male cast of character actors: Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan, Steven Keats, Alex Rocco, Joe Santos, Jack Kehoe, Mitch Ryan, James Tolkan…and the great Mitchum, perfectly cast. I’m a little envious of any fan of 1970s cinema who hasn’t seen it. See it…and have a nice day.
I got a chance to see Eddie Coyle at a screening at the Egyptian Theatre a few months back. It was incredible. It throws you back to a different time and attitude in filmmaking. To get to see it for the first time on the big screen was a definite plus, but the upcoming dvd will give me a chance to go over it with greater ease. I’m really looking forward to this.
I watched “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” at the twin theaters at Cloverleaf Mall in Richmond VA when it came out in 1973. My dad and I were Mitchum fans and looked forward to seeing him in a crime movie we thought would give us vintage Mitchum. We were disappointed, I think, because of the movie’s grim tone. And we didn’t like seeing Mitchum getting the short end. Such is the movie fan who likes the star instead of the story. (In that sense, Mitchum as Philip Marlowe in “Farewell My Lovely” two years later was more enjoyable.) Now, after 36 years, I wonder if I’d appreciate “Eddie Coyle” as I have “Donnie Brasco,” which places Al Pacino in a similar spot as a mid-level hood on the downward trajectory of a criminal career. And I hope I’d appreciate Mitchum’s performance for what it was, not for who it was. I remember “Eddie Coyle” as one of those seventies movies that featured the East Coast city in decline – Boston here but usually New York – both grimy and decaying, American society’s version of a coal-mine canary. I trust Criterion to make that hole look as compelling today as it did in ’73.
A great movie…with a real feel for early 70s Boston…Mitchum is terrific and the supporting cast includes not only Peter Boyle, but Stephen Keats and Alex Rocco (seminal 70s actors who appeared in a bunch of now classic movies)
Kudos to Doinel for pointing out the Auditorium T stop bar!
Unlike what Rich Uncle believes: beware us of Forum Police!
The film is great (it has been available through non-official channels, for all who wanted to see it badly, which I did:) – I only hope the Peter Yates commentary will be good!
I did an inter-library loan and got a hold of a copy of the book before I see the movie. Exceptionally good writing. Terse, tense and pointed. You feel sorry for the poor guy. He’s just a screw in a machine. The forces around him are annihilating. All he really wants is just the wife, kids and a place to lay his head at night.
A commentary you may find interesting.
http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2009/05/17/the_lens_of_eddie_coyle/
If you lived in Boston over the last 40 or so years, you could catch this on Channel 38 periodically. I believe I saw it on AMC back when they actually played classics. It is fantastic. It has a wonderful 1970’s Boston flavor, which is odd to say about something filmed in Boston in the 1970’s , but trust me. Beyond that, it is just as described above by Maurice. They seldom make films about a character like this anymore. Not well, anyway. I actually live around the corner from one of the banks used in the film. I came around a corner when I first moved here and saw it staring me in the face and almost drove off of the road. As far as the bar is concerned, was that on the corner where the Tower Records was? It seemed like it, but I wasn’t old enough for bars then!
I’ve been waiting to see The Friends of Eddie Coyle on DVD and video for a long time. When will Farewell My Lovely with Robert Mitchum come out on DVD?
just saw this film tonight. i thought it was interesting. nothing special. a bit flat. kind of like a melville film, but without his sharp execution.
Just saw the film on DVD…saw it years and years ago when there were wolves in Wales and am a big big fan of everything George V. Higgins (one of the most underrated writers of the 20th cent) ever wrote.
That said, the film is a bit flat – because it is so realistic. On the other hand everyone gives a terrific performance, some of whom are never mentioned. Peter Boyle, a Chicago boy, manages the Boston accent…Joe Santos, all dressed up in sideburns and ‘statche does great – he’s not mentioned anywhere, but this was one of his roles on the way to the Rockford Files…
As you watch the film you realize that in 1973 it was still OK for actors to have bad teeth – something I’ve been noting for the past year or so…
I have a favorite line from the book which is in the movie..Boyle is telling the ATF guy about this van the Mob uses…the line is only slightly condensed in the movie but the essence is still there: “You know what you gotta do when that thing comes up behind you on the Mystic River Bridge? You better make a good act of contrition that’s what you gotta do….”
There are dozens of lines like that in the movie, all of them almost directly from the book. Read the book. See the movie.
I just watched it, feels really flat and boring to me as well.
It may have been shot in Boston, but it doesn’t feel like Boston to me. May be because an English guy made the film.
one of mitchums finest
I saw this in Boston when it first came out. I was in school there at the time. After seeing it, I never felt the same way again about the Callahan Tunnel. I hope they are using something besides yellow tile to line the tunnel that they’re building in the Big Dig.
To those who feel the movie is ‘flat’: give it time, it will keep coming back to you. There’s few films anywhere (and almost no other American film) which is laid down in the chord Yates finds for this story. On the other hand, it may be the too-fast-too-glossy films you grew up on; if you’re a product of recent times—sure, you may never ‘get it’. That’s true too.
To those who feel the film ’doesn’t feel like Boston’ —there will probably never be another film which has more of a Boston feel. Check out the opinions of people who were there at the time. I mean, come on, the hockey game scene?
It doesn’t matter where Yates is from either. If you hadn’t known that you couldn’t have guessed it from his direction.
Note on the source material: Elmore Leonard called it the best American crime novel ever. Yeah, that Elmore Leonard.
In sum: there’s a lot more going on in this film than just Mitchum’s memorable performance. There’s just nothing else like Eddie Coyle. Look closely. Its one of the best crime films ever made. The equal of anything that came out of Europe or Great Britain for the entire century.
i think youre grossly overpraising the film. youre calling it one of the best crime films ever made, then also calling it the equal of any film that came out in the entire first century of cinema in the western world? whats your basis? to me “eddie coyle” is an average crime film. not only that, it hasnt aged well. id love to hear more about the chords it laid down that no other american film ever did, or few films anywhere for that matter.
I love this movie, but I have a question: has anyone else noticed that the the dialogue is extremely hard to hear? I have a feeling this is because of my TV and/or DVD player, both of which are pretty old and out of date. I know the characters speak softly, but it’s really absurd – I have to turn the TV way up to hear what anyone is saying. I don’t think it’s from the movie itself.
I bought it a couple months ago and absolutely loved it.
Buckner—it may be your player. I own FOEC and have watched it four times now and don’t have any problem hearing it.
I can’t believe Matthew S says it doesn’t feel like Boston. That’s where I’m from and in fact have never seen Boston better captured on film. It really gets how Boston and the suburbs looked and felt in the early 70s. I think in part because it doesn’t overdo things—doesn’t try to make it Boston, it just is. It also gets the attitudes right.
haha
they argue, they fight,
but they never once say what the film is about,
why is that?
Let’s consider some specific scenes:
Mitchum gives gun dealer a good talking to:
Eddie ‘Fingers’ Coyle: One of the first things I learned is never to ask a man why he’s in a hurry. All you got to know is I told the man that he could depend on me because you told me I could depend on you. Now one of us is gonna have a big fat problem. Another thing I learned. If anybody’s gonna have a problem, you’re gonna be the one.
Jackie Brown: You finished?
Eddie ‘Fingers’ Coyle: No, I am not finished. Look, I’m gettin’ old, you hear? I spent most of my life hanging around crummy joints with a buncha punks drinkin’ the beer, eatin’ the hash and the hot dogs and watchin’ the other people go off to Florida while I’m sweatin’ out how I’m gonna pay the plumber. I done time and I stood up but I can’t take no more chances. Next time, it’s gonna be me goin’ to Florida.
Jackie Brown goes to pick up machineguns and shows us how alert he is, how smart and prepared with the 45 and search light.
Then he meets Eddie and he does the most stupid thing he can do: he trusts Eddie with information.
By today’s standards that is a very clunky transition – but it is there for a reason, it tells us what the film is about.
Later Yates ratchets this motif up: Foley betrays Eddie’s trust, but after some consternation, Eddie Coyle is ready to make another deal. He can’t trust the cop, but he has to – the cop doesn’t have to trust Eddie, and he doesn’t.
If you want to check out a performance, watch Peter Boyle. Notice how his character changes depending on who he is talking to – he is almost childlike when he is with Foley.
The greatest in the history of the genre?
Dunno, I have to ask though – Is Jacques Becker’s Le Trou in that genre?
The two Peters, Yates the director and Boyle, that are a part of Eddie Coyle sporadically could reach some real heights of ability before succumbing to their later depths of Krull and Everybody Loves Raymond respectively. This is one of those odd films that is hard to place in that in what it does it does extremely well, but it doesn’t quite manage to move those few extra inches beyond that into something more transcendent for me.It stays rather too attached to its own time in a way and doesn’t quite find the means to break free and evolve.
Maurice Gianesin
The Friends of Eddie Coyle is being released to the public May 19th, 2009 on The Criterion Collection Website. The indroductory price is quite nice. Borders or Barnes and Nobles will not match The Criterion introductory price.
I’m a big fan of Robert Mitchum and would like to see the film. Any old timers out there who remember 1974? I was in my late teens and still gooo gooo over Star Wars and all the science fiction films of that time. I have no recollection of The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Any input would be great. SIght unseen is always a gamble when it comes to buying movies you have never seen. There has to be someone out there who is still alive and well enough to remember The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Thank you.