The Friends of Eddie Coyle
A good movie. Not a great movie.
Small time thug, Eddie (Robert Mitchum) , is facing some hard time because of “that thing in New Hampshire” and tries to swing a deal with the cops (Richard Jordan) to get out of at least serving most of the time. He’s still involved in small time bank robberies and gun procurement, but turns over the guy he gets the guns from to the cops. The cop presses him for more, and he resists until he can no longer, and offers to turn over the bank robbers. Unknown to Eddie, the cops got them the night before without his help, so he has no bargaining power.
In the mean time, a bartender, Dillon (Peter Boyle), has been informing the cops on everything all the way along, and starts to finger Eddie to “Mr. Big” as the one who’s squealing. Mr Big puts a hit out on Eddie and directs Dillon to do it.
It’s a bleak story, but well told.
The main reason I wanted to see it (it’s been sitting here since August), is because a long time ago, The Globe had a list of the movies in or about Boston and Eddie Coyle came out on top for accents. Besides, it was all done on location and I was interested to see what Boston looked like 10 years before I got here.
Verdict: it looks a lot like it does now, only more run down and with bigger cars. As for the accent, maybe it’s because I’ve been here so long I don’t hear it any more, but … I didn’t hear much of it. The only accent that really catches my ear any more is East Cambridge (eh, Tim?)
Overall, very good.
