"Not that I'm a complete whore, understand. There are movies I won't do for any amount. I turned down Patton and I turned down Dirty Harry. Movies that piss on the world. If I've got five bucks in my pocket, I don't need to make money that fucking way, daddy." ~ Robert Mitchum

After Peter Yates had transitioned to being an in demand Hollywood director after Bullitt with Steve McQueen, he revisited the crime genre a few years later with the much less turbo charged The Friends of Eddie Coyle. It was a low key look at some of the lesser lights of the Boston crime scene and an unusual but illuminating use of Robert Mitchum’s mature talents, starring as the increasingly desperate ex-jailbird determined not to be put away for another stretch. Based on a best selling novel by George V. Higgins and elegantly shot in earthy, muted tones by cinematographer Victor J. Kemper, it sits neatly in the New Hollywood mode of the early 1970s when studios were cluelessly taking chances and hoping for the best and sometimes creating lasting gems in unexpected places. Yates provided a dour study in grit with beautifully weighted performances and meticulously shot heist scenes that captured a Nixonian America where everyone was out for themselves and making a buck was king. Plus les choses changent.

Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum) is a low level criminal cog, acting as a middle man between guys who need untraceable handguns and guys who illegally sell them. He buys them from Jackie Brown (Steven Keats) and sells them to Scalise (Alex Rocco) and his gang who run a series of bank heists. Eddie also has a problem with an impending sentencing for a crime he took the sole rap for, keeping his colleague Dillon (Peter Boyle) off the hook. Undercover cop Dave Foley (Richard Jordan) is secretly paying Dillon for information and eventually convinces a reluctant Eddie to inform on his supplier in exchange for helping quash the looming prison time. Jackie puts out the word that Eddie ratted on him and a hit goes out on Eddie, with Dillon given the job to whack his friend.

Peter Yates had cracked the big time in 1968 with Bullitt, a star driven, adrenaline fueled cops and robbers piece and continued his strong run with A-list stars and projects, including Dustin Hoffman in John and Mary, Peter O’Toole in the brilliant Murphy’s War and Robert Redford in the William Goldman scripted The Hot Rock. Even if The Friends of Eddie Coyle continued this tradition of name above the title entries by casting Robert Mitchum, the similarities stop there – nothing about the film in tone or style screams movie star and Mitchum does his best to keep it that way.

Mitchum is felt as much by his absences as by his presence, as he is missing for nearly half of the running time while Yates explores the wider activities of the ‘friends’ of Eddie. Yates humanises Eddie with a quick home vignette where Eddie sees of his teenage kids to school and flirts with his very Irish wife Sheila (Helena Carroll) – a middle-aged, plumpish homely woman who further removes Mitchum (subliminally at least) from our preconceptions of the actor’s womanising movie star image. Eddie is a family man who makes his living in the lower depths of society, not above violence when it’s needed or the threat of it if it serves his or his ‘friends’ interests. Mitchum is wonderful at evoking both an integrity (albeit misdirected) and a world-weariness that suggests he’d much rather not be in this line of work, but for whatever reasons, it’s the only work he can do.

The other cast members are a web of support around the character and evoke the world Eddie inhabits very authentically. Steven Keats as the odious Jackie Brown is particularly memorable and nails a type that was a staple in ‘70s crime films (and on TV) and his interactions with Eddie are standouts. Richard Jordan is solid as the earnest if slightly jaded young cop who bounces between his bosses and their bureaucratic impulses and the guys on the other side of the tracks who he knows only too well. The line between the good and bad guys is a thin one, and the sense that this is just how life works reveals the banality of existence on both sides of that line. Even the heist scenes are played in a non-glamorised and matter of fact way, not juiced up with over the top pacing or dramatic editing – in other words, this is just how it goes sometimes and soon you’ll get back to your boring bank job and we’ll get one with our business. Which makes the violence even uglier when it does happen.

Peter Yates had made a name for himself with his ability to handle chase scenes, but here the chase is contained to a bumper cars scenario in a New England train station parking lot. Yates and screenwriter/producer Paul Monash have fun with the hippie ‘revolutionaries,’ so prevalent in pop culture at the time, but the shaggy couple Jackie Brown hooks up with only want machine guns to rob a bank! Same too with the source of Jackie’s supply – in a tense meet up scene Yates builds unbearable tension at a night time exchange, only to find the gun runners are not hardened thugs, but low level teens from a factory in Rhode Island who are shitting themselves in cashing in on their access to weapons.  

Central to the theme is the issue of trust. Eddie makes a fuss with Jackie over the fact he has given his word based on Jackie’s commitment, and that means something. In Eddie’s old fashioned world a man’s word is the gold standard and Jackie realises that Eddie is not to be crossed. Dillon knows Eddie can be counted on as he stood up and did time for Dillon and didn’t rat on him. Foley presses Eddie for information and the irony is that when Eddie does crack and finally decides to rat on Jackie about the bank heist guns, the information is redundant. The betrayal of Eddie’s own values is underlined when he is whacked for a betrayal he didn’t do by his so called ‘friend.’ Peter Boyle, coming off his career boosting work in John G. Avildsen's Joe, a satire about mass violence, is very fine as the ethics free, duplicitous Dillon. When Boyle saw audiences cheering on his character’s mass murder in Joe he refused films with direct violence, including The French Connection, but obviously saw that the violence in Eddie was real, contextual and revealing. 

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a stunning little crime film, superbly acted and expertly handled by a talented English director at a time when Hollywood made films for grown-ups. The muted tones and understated performances are matched by a lovely Dave Grusin score and Peter Yates continued a rare streak of form in showing America through and outsider’s insightful gaze, giving Robert Mitchum a chance to show a different side to his usual image as an older actor, and a late career masterwork to boot.