| Matt Clark |
The Friends of Eddie Coyle plays at the Trylon Cinema from Sunday, May 18th, through Tuesday, May 20th. For tickets, showtimes, and other series information, visit trylon.org.
The crime film and the heist picture have been integral to American cinema since its earliest days: gangster films of the 30s, noir of the 40s and 50s, even silent pictures like The Great Train Robbery (1903) still reverberate powerfully through our shared cinematic vocabulary. In the late 60s and early 70s, crime stories were entering a new chapter. The relaxation of censorship and the decline of a rigid studio system resulted in grittier, bloodier genre films that also incorporated European auteurist influences. This new breed of crime film was met with some controversy, but also fascination and substantial box office success. Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, The French Connection, and many others were audience favorites as well as critical darlings. It is in this context that Peter Yates made his grim, melancholic, character-driven portrait of the Boston underworld, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973). While some predecessors and contemporaries of Yates’s film involve rather frank examinations of sex, violence, and power, they all still tend to feed into the drama and mythology of the American outlaw. Coyle brutally eschews any inkling of glamorization, instead depicting an unsentimental portrait of professional criminals as working stiffs with bosses and deadlines and bills to pay. Here, guys are willing to lie and betray each other not because they’re arch villains but because life is hard and pragmatism is paramount for survival. Yates’s kitchen-sink take on the genre would largely fail to ignite interest from audiences seeking the action and spectacle of Coppola or Friedkin, but it was recognized by critics at the time and has since become an enduring landmark in both neo-noir and Robert Mitchum filmographies.
A public misunderstanding of what Yates was looking to accomplish with Coyle isn’t difficult to comprehend. To the extent that the American moviegoing public was familiar with Yates, it was due to his wildly entertaining car chase extravaganza Bullitt (1968). It’s possible that some fortunate film fans had seen Yates’s first crime film, Robbery (1967), or even The Hot Rock (1972), though Hot Rock also didn’t do great numbers at the box office. All three films are showcases for Yates’s command of action sequences and his meticulous sense of timing and editing. This understanding of physical tension and cinematic action isn’t totally absent in Coyle; the film is punctuated by a series of bank robbing sequences—masterfully edited echoes of Robbery—that provide an action-packed focus for the original trailer. However, these interludes are very nearly incidental to the real attraction of Coyle which is rooted in performance and dialogue. Robert Mitchum plays the title character; a low level criminal operative who seems to know everyone, does a little bit of everything, and is currently making ends meet by supplying guns to the bank robbers. Coyle’s universe and his values are powerfully rendered primarily via conversations between characters. Deals, details, diatribes, and full-blown bullshit sessions are the principle means by how the audience understands these men—thieves, gun runners, middlemen, and the cops who pursue them. These conversations are faithfully drawn from George V. Higgins’s original novel of the same title. Higgins, a practicing criminal attorney in Boston, wanted to authentically capture the speaking rhythm of the criminals he had known. Though the author wasn’t an active participant in the filming, Yates fully commits to the spirit and the feeling of Higgins’s book by allowing the characters to be drawn by their own words.
Higgins’s dedication to authenticity and Yates’s desire to convey Coyle as realistically as possible were made manifest through Robert Mitchum’s highlight lead performance. Mitchum, 55 at the time, had wrapped up the 60s playing heroic protagonists in the kinds of Westerns that led to his stardom in the previous decade. He was actually considering retirement in the early 70s and was at somewhat of a crossroads in his career. Still, he was able to bring a studied diligence and enthusiasm to the palpably melancholy role of Eddie “Fingers” Coyle. During production, Mitchum hung around with local police, honing his ear to the accent and the rhythm of Boston dialogue. He reportedly wanted to meet with famed gangster, Whitey Bulger, to better understand the specifics of the Boston underworld. While he was warned against contacting Bulger, he did end up spending some time with members of the Winter Hill Gang that Bulger associated with. Mitchum managed his normally imposing 6’1” frame by maintaining a stooped, shouldered posture and covering himself in a rumpled overcoat. He gained some weight to better portray a man who, as Coyle explains, spent time in “crummy places” where he “drank the beer and ate the hotdogs and the hash.” Coyle introduces himself and establishes his credibility not via a tale of his personal competence in committing crime or violence but rather a story of how he endured extreme physical pain and punishment due to a previous professional oversight. Contained within this brief anecdote is the history of a man who has tasted a lifetime of losing and harsh consequences. It’s a history visible in Coyle’s haggard countenance and reserved, cautious approach to his surroundings. The reserve is broken on several occasions only by desperation. Coyle needs money, he can’t afford to do any more time, and he fears any further repercussions for what he feels forced to do.
Writing and performance—from Mitchum but also from a stellar supporting cast including Peter Boyle, Alex Rocco, Richard Jordan, and Steven Keats—are undoubtedly highlights of Yates’s film but another crucial element of its effectiveness is the use of Boston itself. Yates shot the entire film on location. Every bar, bowling alley, diner, and apartment is both the genuine article and found somewhere within the Boston metro area. Crucially, it does not look much like the Boston celebrated in other films. Nearly all of the activity undertaken by Coyle and the other characters are things that cannot be seen or overheard by others. So instead of Boston Commons or the Freedom Trail, most of Coyle takes place in industrial areas, train stations, parking lots, desolate watering holes, late-night coffee shops, and the plaza outside the brutalist monolith that is Boston City Hall. Even the heist crew during the peak of their success can be found hiding out in modest trailers or napping in concrete parking structures. It’s an unsentimental, impersonal physical space that echoes its characters perfectly.
It’s difficult not to evaluate the small-scale griminess of Coyle against the operatic romance of other gangster pictures. However, it would be a mistake to consider the specificity of the picture for a lack of drama. The dialogue is not only masterful in its sound but contains all the tension of a high-stakes shootout. It’s filled with verbal sparring, careful grilling, cutting ripostes, and wonderfully evocative details. Coyle is a potently class-conscious portrait of American outlawry. Coyle and those around him aren’t kings of the world brought low by hubris or violence—theirs is a story closer to Blue Collar (1978) than it ever is to Scarface (1932 or 1983). They’re supposed to follow certain rules and they value their reputations but their circumstances are constantly shifting beneath their feet. Eddie and his “friends” are cogs in a ruthless machine where the payouts are meager, the sacrifices are dear, and everyone answers to “the man.”
Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon