The Friends of Eddie Coyle

The Friends of Eddie Coyle
Directed by	Peter Yates
Produced by	Paul Monash
Written by	Paul Monash George V. Higgins (novel)
Starring	Robert Mitchum Peter Boyle
Music by	Dave Grusin
Cinematography	Victor J. Kemper
Editing by	Patricia Lewis Jaffe
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	June 26, 1973 (1973-06-26)
Running time	103 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a 1973 crime film starring Robert Mitchum and Peter Boyle. Directed by Peter Yates, the screenplay was adapted from the novel by George V. Higgins. It was released on DVD for the first time from The Criterion Collection on May 19, 2009. The book has also been adapted into a stage play by Bill Doncaster; Stickball Productions held a staged reading in Somerville, Massachusetts, on November 13, 2010, and launched a full production in December, 2011.

Plot

Eddie Coyle is an aging, 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 a sentencing recommendation from an ATF agent, Dave Foley, who demands that Coyle become an informer in return.

A gang led by Jimmy Scalise and Artie Van has been pulling a series of robberies in broad daylight at local banks, Coyle having supplied them with guns. Another gun runner, Jackie Brown is in popular demand. Coyle wants to buy more pistols from him while a younger couple is shopping for machine guns.

Jackie goes to great lengths to get Coyle what he needs. Coyle delivers the guns to Scalise but then he offers to set up Jackie for the cop Foley to avoid jail. In a train station's parking lot, waiting to sell his machine guns, Jackie is apprehended by Foley's men.

Coyle feels he has fulfilled his end of the deal, Foley claims it is not enough. He wants more or else it is prison for Coyle.

In desperation, Coyle agrees to inform on his friends Scalise and Van as they prepare to pull off their next bank job but it turns out Foley already has inside information and has caught them in the act.

The mob thinks that Coyle is the snitch. They assign his friend, Dillon, to kill him. Before carrying out his orders, Dillon treats his friend to a night on the town, taking him to dinner and a Boston Bruins hockey game. He gets Coyle drunk and then shoots him inside a moving car.

In the final scene, Foley meets with his snitch, Dillon.

Cast

• Robert Mitchum as Eddie "Fingers" Coyle
• Peter Boyle as Dillon
• Richard Jordan as Dave Foley
• Steven Keats as Jackie Brown
• Alex Rocco as Jimmy Scalise
• Joe Santos as Artie Van

Production

Filming took place throughout the Boston area, including Dedham, Cambridge, Milton, Quincy, Sharon, Somerville, Malden, and Weymouth, Massachusetts. A gun purchase scene was filmed at the stone crusher of the former Rowe Quarry on the Malden/Revere town line near Route 1.

Reception

The Friends of Eddie Coyle was well-reviewed on its initial release and continues to be among the most highly regarded crime films of the 1970s. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it four stars, his highest rating, while Vincent Canby of The New York Times also reviewed it favorably, calling it "a good, tough, unsentimental movie". Both reviewers singled out Mitchum's lead performance as a key ingredient of the film's success. Ebert wrote: "Eddie Coyle is made for [Mitchum]: a weary middle-aged man, but tough and proud; a man who has been hurt too often in life not to respect pain; a man who will take chances to protect his own territory."

External links

• The Friends of Eddie Coyle at the Internet Movie Database
• The Friends of Eddie Coyle at AllRovi
• The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) at The Criterion Collection