A Gary I know mentioned he'd seen The Friends Of Eddie Coyle recently. I didn't remember ever seeing it so I put I on my library queue. They have a lot of the Criterion releases and this is one. It's a Peter Yates movie and he's hit or miss for me. He worked on The Saint and Secret Agent in the 1960s. He directed Bullitt in 1968 then later he directed Mother, Jugs & Speed and The Deep. Peter's list of films on the IMDb tells me I haven't seen much of anything he's done since Krull in 1983. Yates says in the commentary that The Friends Of Eddie Coyle, Breaking Away and The Dresser are his favorite films of the 25 he's directed. The commentary was recorded for the 2009 Criterion DVD and Yates died a couple of years after. The movie was written by Peter Monash who adapted the George V Higgins book with the same name. I haven't read any Higgins but I know I have seen some of Monash's TV work. His career started in 1952 and lasted for 48 years. He mostly worked in TV, this is one of his very few theatrical films.
The Friends Of Eddie Coyle is about the sad lives of Eddie Coyle and some other criminals. Robert Mitchum is Eddie "Fingers" Coyle, a gunrunner in Boston. He's in trouble with the law, he got caught driving a truck filled with stolen liquor for a bartending gangster played by Peter Boyle, and he's facing 2-3 years in the slammer. Eddie sets up another gunrunner to try get out of the expected jail time. That guy vows vengeance. Alex Rocco and Joe Santos are bank robbers, on their last job a bank employee was killed, then someone sets them up with the feds. They think Eddie narced but it was really Peter. The mob hires Peter to take Eddie for a ride. Sad for Eddie. Life goes on and the smarter rat gets the cheese.
I enjoyed the movie well enough, it sure reminds me not to get involved with crime, but I doubt that I'll ever get back to it. I'm not going to go buy a copy. I find I don't get back to re-watching a lot of more modern gangster films. Maybe once I have more time on my hands I'll get back to them. I did enjoy the Peter Yates commentary, maybe more than the movie. Funny how that goes, huh.
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