A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

"The Friends of Eddie Coyle" is an overlooked little gem of a crime film that's notable for what it doesn't do, and that's inundate us with action or melodrama. It's the very matter of fact, unsentimental quality of the film that makes it something interesting and worth savouring. In its story of cops and crooks, it shows how there can be dishonour among thieves, especially if you're an ageing sad sack like Robert Mitchums' Eddie Coyle, and will do just about anything to avoid doing any more time. This experience benefits from capable storytelling and straightforward, no frills filmmaking. The cast is peppered with top notch veterans of supporting and character parts, Dave Grusins' score is just right, and the use of various Boston locations is excellent.Mitchum is great in the title role, managing to infuse him with some degree of likability. You shouldn't really be rooting for this guy, but Mitchum just might have you doing so. Eddie is looking at a long prison sentence, so he decides to start ratting on his underworld associates to dedicated detective Dave Foley (a typically solid Richard Jordan). Chief among them is gun runner Jackie Brown, played by Steven Keats. There's also a trio of robbers running around holding up banks, and Eddie knows who they are.The film co-stars talents such as Peter Boyle as saloon owner Dillon, and Alex Rocco and Joe Santos as Jimmy Scalise and Artie Van, two of the robbers. Buffs will delight in recognizing other players such as Mitch Ryan ("Lethal Weapon"), Peter MacLean ("Squirm"), James Tolkan ("Back to the Future"), Matthew Cowles ('All My Children'), and Jack Kehoe ("Serpico"). Director Peter Yates, who'd shown an impressive versatility over the years, moving from things like "Bullitt" to "The Deep" to "The Dresser" to "Krull", does an admirable job in creating this world of scummy people. One can imagine that a film of this kind might bore viewers with shorter attention spans, but it's richly rewarding for those looking for a little nuance and not just escapism.Scripted by producer Paul Monash, based on the acclaimed novel by George V. Higgins.Eight out of 10.

As esteemed film critic Kent Jones explains in his excellent Criterion essay, The Friends of Eddie Coyle is "an inside job". Although this heist movie is sprinkled with two stifling bank robberies and a frenetic parking lot double-cross, director Peter Yates (who got in an early career best directing Steve McQueen in 1968′s Bullitt) manages to cause a stir in the film via an introverted look at old-timing gangsters and the new wise guys.Robert Mitchum is the titular Eddie 'Fingers' Coyle. A lifelong middleman gangster, he earns enough bread to keep his wife and two kids at home sweet. Needing to get his quick hands on thirty guns for a friend's big bank robbery job, he gets mixed up with bigmouth gunrunner Jackie Brown (Steven Keats). Whilst the heists go accordingly, ears are burning in the Boston underworld. At risk of heading back into jail after being caught drug smuggling, Coyle breaks the outlaws' code of conduct and grasses the names of his friend's to the nuisance detective, Agent Dave Foley (Richard Jordan) in a desperate attempt to keep his name in the clear. But the ears of the Boston Mafioso are burning and soon Eddie looks like he's in for white-knuckle trouble.Lifted from the George V. Higgins novel (which is also very good, FYI), screenplay writer Paul Monash manages to get some authentic swagger in the perfectly timed, heavy dialogue sequences, like when Detective Foley suggests to Coyle that "everybody oughta listen to their mother". It not only had me in stitches, but managed to validate and humanise everyone's greasy fingered pursuit.There's some great, beaten up performances here from some forgotten American greats. Peter Boyle is dynamic and unpredictable as the shifty local barman, and Coyle's only friend, Dillon, whilst the ruffled Steven Keats makes his feature debut as the gun smuggling Jackie Brown (ahem – namedrop!). Best of all, and perhaps unsurprisingly, is Bobbie Mitchum as the titular character. Slurring his way through a pitch-perfect accent (a rare attempt, throughout his career), the once lovable Hollywood rogue is clearly relishing the opportunity to become it's downtown elder statesmen. With flecks of grey, a looming hunch and wise, baggy eyes, Mitchum's depiction of Coyle as a man looking for rope is laconic, yet expressively wrought.It does have the same congested air of gritty Blaxploitation features like Super Fly, only the survivalism tactics exist now in a typically white, Boston vein. There's no moral judgement. The characters we expect to be pure evil are the do-gooding nice guys, whilst the meek prove the quickest to stab someone in the back. Unpredictable, and even with a few bum-note exchanges, The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a nuanced, melancholic portrait of the distinctly unglamorous American underworld.Read more reviews at www.366movies.com

Other reviewers have mentioned this film's very 70s look and concluded that it looks dated, but it doesn't really. Shot now, but set in the 70s it might look and play just the same. More a slice-of-lowlife character study than a crime thriller, the acting and writing are wonderful. Mitchum's character is world-weary in the extreme, Boyle is so duplicitous that he succeeds in deceiving himself and Richard Jordan hits just the perfect amoral note as an exploitative Fed who manipulates both of them with shaky promises and dirty deals. Boston itself, with its grungy urbanity is very well used and the dauntingly fortress-like architecture of Government Center seems an appropriately sinister nest for the conscience-less bureaucrats who work there. Here, none of the glamor visible in The Godfather is present. The criminal characters live quietly desperate, lower middle class lives and bungle along from one 'job' to the next. They are working stiffs whose métier is crime, and their world is a dark and unpleasant one. It was nonetheless a privilege to visit it.

This could be called one of the great neo-noirs of the 1970s. This will prove to be a strange opening sentence for this review as I will devote most of it to discussing why I don't think this film is really a "noir"at all. Noir- for all of its "grit"- is a romantic genre. The Noir anti-hero commits, in one way or another, a transgression in order to achieve transcendent love and passion, the hope of realizing the sublime. The noir protagonist is, then, truly an "anti-hero," or even "tragic hero." He has the potential for greatness, for sublimity, but this fate, by its very potential, is derailed due to some "tragic flaw" that is part and partial of the character's potential for greatness. Eddie Coyle, the ubiquitous main character and a small-time Boston gun-runner, has no potential for greatness. Judged simply by his actions, he's just a scum-bag in a world of scum-bags. That we come to both care for him and accept his fate with an almost cynical (in the classical Greek sense) acceptance is a major reason why this is such a great, and I think unique, work. It's greatness comes, if we want to get auteur-istic about it, not from the director or writer, but from the star, Robert Mitchum. Mitchum has long been amongst my favorite Hollywood performers, but I never knew he was capable of a performance like this. Few ever have been. Without the "showiness" of most celebrated Hollywood actors- say late period Dustin Hoffman or Jamie Foxx- Mitchum invents Coyle. He invents him more than the writer. This is a (rare in film) example of the performer as "auteur". If almost any other actor had played Coyle- as written- I think he could have come off as such a worthless slime-ball that most would be tempted to ask "why am I watching a movie about this pathetic, boring loser?" But Mitchum instills in Coyle a capacity for observance- for something akin to, though not identical with, empathy. He is, as Mitchum embodies him, someone who has suffered for his courage (which should not, in this case, be equated with honor) enough that he sees the fear and suffering in others, and he knows how to use it. But ultimately, he just doesn't want himself to suffer that much again. In this way, Mitchum makes Coyle almost a tragic, though not "noir"-ish(!)- figure, and this film one of profound pessimism. Coyle is humanity. In daring to face reality, he learns its horrific nature, and will do anything to escape it. But once understood, the real is the only real. We are trapped. Another note, the film has a brilliant sense of place. It captures not only Boston, but low-life New England in general, perfectly. I lived in the New England states for much of my teens and twenties. For me it was, especially in those months known for "Fall foliage!", a landscape of death and decay, though some claim to find it beautiful. This film transported me from Cali back to that wintry slum. I both admire it and resent it for this.