Category: Peter Boyle

THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE (1973)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Peter Yates
CAST: Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan, Steven Keats, Alex Rocco
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 98% Certified Fresh

PLOT: After his most recent arrest has him looking at a long prison sentence for repeat offenses, an aging Boston gangster must decide whether or not to snitch on his friends to avoid jail time.


When scrolling through movie titles online or on your favorite streaming service, you might be forgiven for thinking that a 1973 movie with a title like The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a dialogue-driven character study by John Sayles or John Schlesinger, about a group of friends gathered at a hunting cottage or a class reunion or something.  Imagine my surprise when I watched it, and it turned out to be a nearly-forgotten gem of early ‘70s crime films.  (I’d call it a neo-noir, but it was released over fifty years ago now, so I’m not sure the term “neo” applies anymore.)  Featuring spare, economical storytelling reminiscent of other crime classics like Rififi [1955] or The Killing [1956], The Friends of Eddie Coyle is indeed a character study, but one that manages to downplay even Robert Mitchum’s heroic persona.

Eddie Coyle is getting old, and he knows it.  He’s currently facing up to 5 years in jail when he goes in front of a judge in a few days, but his old associates still rely on him to obtain “clean” firearms to use in pulling bank robberies.  The first time we see him doing this thankless job, he tells his cocky young supplier a story about why he has extra knuckles on his left hand, a speech that might have been written by a multiverse version of Quentin Tarantino.  (In fact, the bank robberies are accomplished when Eddie’s friends hold the bank manager’s family members hostage, so he’ll open the vault without question, a method paraphrased by “Pumpkin” in the opening scene of Pulp Fiction.)  Mitchum delivers this mini-logue with his trademark brand of world-weariness and menace, leading us to believe at the outset that he’s a man not to be trifled with, when in fact he’s little more than a glorified gofer for his bosses.

The film oozes a 1970’s atmosphere in every frame, but somehow it doesn’t feel all that dated.  There are no long zooms or extended chase sequences.  The most suspenseful scenes are the two bank robberies and one aborted car chase that is over as soon as it starts.  (I actually thought that was pretty clever, subverting our expectations by ending the chase after about fifteen seconds; this method was also put to good use in 2003’s not-as-bad-as-you-think S.W.A.T.)  The dialogue feels more modern, laced with f-words and racial epithets that, again, feel more at home in a Q.T. film than in a Robert Mitchum movie.  For my money, there may be a few movie-watching experiences that can top hearing Robert Mitchum telling someone to go f— himself, but I can’t think of what they are right now.

Director Peter Yates (Bullitt, Breaking Away) never once strains for effect, never showboats.  Like John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle, it is content to merely set the stage and observe what happens, letting the events and the characters drive the plot instead of contrived action scenes or fancy camera movements.  Instead of becoming bored, I was drawn into Eddie’s dilemma, his conflict between loyalty to his so-called friends and his desire to stay out of prison.  Complicating matters is the fact he has a wife and three school-age kids; they all live in a tiny townhouse where you can touch both walls of the kitchen with your arms outstretched.  This is a wrinkle uncommon in most gangster films, where the heavies lead unattached lives.

When Eddie approaches a federal agent (Richard Jordan) and asks if the New Hampshire judge will look favorably on Eddie’s sentencing if he agrees to squeal on his gunrunner friend, I felt a little sorry for him, and that’s a neat trick.  Because of Mitchum’s presence, you almost automatically want to root for him to do the right thing, but because of the character he’s playing so well, I just got the feeling that things were not going to end well for him, and I was right.  After getting a taste of what Eddie has to offer in terms of high-profile arrests, the federal agent leaves him dangling, telling him the judge will keep him out of jail if he keeps ratting on his buddies.  Poor Eddie is in an impossible situation, and the irony is, when he finally makes his decision, it’s already too late…but I don’t want to spoil anything.  It’s a brilliant catch-22 that left me feeling even sorrier for Eddie than I did before.

The whole movie is like that.  We’re shown right up front that Eddie is a criminal.  But the hands-off filmmaking approach allows the viewer to make up his own mind.  You could, I suppose, watch this movie in one of two mindsets: either you empathize right away with Eddie and his predicament, or you can take him at face value and watch the movie waiting to see if he gets what’s coming to him, both for being a crook AND for squealing on his friends.  Either way, I think the movie’s resolution satisfies both interpretations, which is not an easy task.

If you sit down to watch The Friends of Eddie Coyle, just remember that it’s not The French Connection or Heat or anything splashy or flashy.  It’s a grim, gritty crime drama with a bona fide legend playing a petty thug instead of a crime lord.  Mitchum fits the bill, and the movie fits Mitchum.  The Boston environments – all shot 100% on location – mirror the way Eddie walks and talks: gray, blank, tired.  Beneath that grimy coating, though, is a rather brilliant character study of a man whose life has brought him to a crossroads where he must decide what’s more important to him, his friends or his life.  (His decision kinda surprised me, I’ll be honest.)

TAXI DRIVER

By Marc S. Sanders

A number of years back I was watching Robert DeNiro interviewed by James Lipton on Inside The Actor’s Studio.  DeNiro recalled considering doing a modern day follow up on one of his most memorable characters, Travis Bickle, with director Martin Scorsese.  Lipton thought it would be a marvelous idea.  So do I.  However, I don’t think it’d be a comfortable film to watch.  Taxi Driver certainly isn’t a comfortable film to watch.  It might seem a little dated now, but its themes of loneliness, isolation, depression and violent obsession remain entirely unsettling.

Travis claims to be an honorably discharged Marine in his mid-20s, when he applies to be a New York City cab driver during the present period of the film, 1976.  He recounts every thought that runs through his head, and when you are alone, behind the wheel of a taxi cab, traveling through the arteries and veins of an ugly, crime ridden, seedy part of town, a lot of ideas run through your sub conscious.  Travis recognizes so much wrong with what he sees through his windshield that he prophesizes one day when a good, solid rain will wash away all of this scum and filth.  Maybe Travis will be the bearer of that inevitable storm.

Travis lives alone in a one room apartment with junk food, an old television set, and his unending thoughts that he writes in his journal.  When he’s motivated, he occupies himself with chin ups and pushups.  He also becomes enamored with perhaps the only pure and innocent occupant of this ugly city-a young, Presidential campaign worker named Becky (Cybil Shepherd).  Travis approaches her innocently enough under the guise of wanting to volunteer for the campaign and invite Becky out on a date.  He’s cordial enough, albeit awkward too.  Yet, he can not understand how twisted it is to escort Becky to a dirty, X rated film.  She’s sickened by the film and Travis is at a loss of what he did wrong.  Travis has become infected by the city he circumvents each day, and he’s blinded of gentlemanly courtesy he could be providing for a woman he’s interested in.

The well-known script for Taxi Driver was written by Paul Schrader.  He quickly conceived its disturbing ideas during an isolation binge he found himself trapped in. Schrader couldn’t make sense of his mindset at times.  One week he was gorging on sleeplessness, junk food, and endless television watching.  The next week, he was motivated to get in shape with exercise and healthy eating.  There was a lack of consistency in his behaviors.  Travis goes through the same experiences, but he also finds motive to respond to the offenses that he sees. 

Scorsese captures scenes of some of the passengers that enter Travis’ cab.  One scene includes the director himself in the back seat as a character obsessing over a woman in an apartment above.  It’s a cameo of an unhinged man that Travis never had any interest in knowing, yet this person insists on sharing his frustrated anguish.  Later, Travis happens upon the Presidential candidate in his back seat.  The candidate seems noble enough inquiring on what issues are most important to Travis as an American citizen.  What I gathered from the scene is that the candidate has his own ways of fighting for a better future dressed in a suit on a campaign trail, while Travis has a more disturbing outlook on what should be done. 

Midway through the film, Travis is purchasing guns from an underground seller and practicing how to quickly unleash his arsenal for when the fight crosses paths with him.  He builds a quick draw sling to hide a gun under a sleeve.  He practices how to whip out the switchblade he keeps strapped to his boot.  One of the most famous scenes in film history occurs when Travis is talking to his mirror image asking repeatedly, “You talkin’ to me?”.  Supposedly, this moment never existed in Schrader’s script, and Scorsese was fortunate to capture DeNiro getting into character.  Whatever the origin of the scene, it sends a chilling summation of where Travis prioritizes his mental focus.  It’s not on love or affection for a fellow human being.  Once he blew it with Becky, other ideas remained with Travis.  Now, he’s solely obsessed with the war that he’ll fight for, all by himself.

Schrader and Scorsese go even a step further with the character as he comes upon a twelve-year-old hooker, named Iris, (Jodie Foster) and her street pimp, named Sport (Harvey Keitel).  He takes Iris for breakfast encouraging her to go home to her family and get away from this life.  Iris cannot see the need for that.  This encounter almost seems to justify Travis’ will for violence.  He now has a cause to rescue this child from the danger she’s immersed in.  I won’t spoil the outcome of this relationship.  Yet, Schrader and Scorsese keep the ending unexpected.  Have we been watching a dangerous villain for the last two hours, or were we watching a hero? Does the bloody and excessive violence that wraps up the picture lean towards heroics or vigilante crime?  These are good questions to ask but they are also consistent with the contradictions of Travis’ mindset.  When all you have to occupy yourself with are the endless, mounting thoughts running through your head, you are doing nothing but debating with your subconscious, and it’s likely you’ll have no other person to assure you that whatever actions and choices you make are the right ones.  One day you wonder if it’s all worth it.  The next day, you feel chosen for a crusade.

So as DeNiro and Scorsese considered a follow up to Travis Bickle in a modern time of the internet, where the world has only gotten smaller and more intimate with itself, I’d be nervous to see what becomes of him.  Travis would likely still be alone, driving his cab twelve hours a day, and listening to the thoughts running through his head.  Only this time, he’d likely be getting responses to journal inputs, that he’d put on blogs and in chat rooms, from unknown keyboard warriors justifying his will for violent cleansings.  Travis would no longer be limited to just his own inner thoughts.  Now, he’d have the influence of others willing to share their own internal ideas of how to clean up the streets.  They might feel helpful and recognize themselves as saviors, but would they be able to decipher what needs saving, what needs improving, and what is the best, healthiest and most ideal way of following through with those missions?  Violence might be their answer. 

You know what.  Perhaps, I’m not being fair.  Maybe I should be more optimistic.  Some of these keyboard warriors who hide behind their computer monitors may attempt to convince Travis that the world is fine as it is and does not need the cleansings that he had always considered.  I don’t know. Sometimes, like Paul Schrader or Travis Bickle, even I go back and forth on what’s right, what’s wrong and what’s the best thing to do.

THE CANDIDATE

By Marc S. Sanders

A politician’s career isn’t being elected. A politician’s career is getting elected. Once it is all over, what does the politician do now?

I’m not sure I understand why Jeremy Larner’s script won the Oscar in 1972; only because I didn’t gather much from this Robert Redford star vehicle. What exactly was the point of what I was watching? Redford plays Bill McKay, an idealistic lawyer recruited to run for the California senate on a Democratic ticket.

He’s sure to lose and I guess he’s okay with that because it’s acknowledged that way early on, and yet he just follows through with the campaign. He’s a kid compared to his seasoned Republican incumbent opponent. So he’s got that to deal with, and he’s remorsefully living in the unwanted shadow of his father, a former good ol’ boy governor. He also occasionally brushes past a girl that follows his campaign. Bill is happily married. Sounds like a good set up, right? Maybe it is. Yet I’m not sure any of this is the set up of the film. There is rarely any conversations in The Candidate. Hardly any dramatic pauses occur either. Nary a scene with his wife. The televised debate midway through is generic cliche really. One good moment occurs when the Republican candidate steps on Bill’s toes during a threatening brush fire. Now here’s some conflict. Now we’re cooking. Except…we’re not. The film returns to its established theme from earlier. For some reason in the last half of the film, it throws two or three punchlines at you, and…well, I guess it’s a comedy now.

The Candidate fills a majority of its two hours with McKay doing a lot of handshaking, baby holding, celebrity meets (Hi Natalie Wood!) and autograph signing. When that’s not happening, we are treated to repetitive close ups of members of his campaign and voters. I felt like I should have known these people. Did I fall asleep during their big introduction in the film, or were those scenes deleted from the finished product? Bill doesn’t say much except to make generic statements that no voter would ever disagree with. That’s okay, I guess, yet really it’s just boring. None of this packs any punch.

Larner was a speechwriter for Eugene McCarthy in 1968, and Redford recruited him to write and tailor this script for him to produce and star, in response to his own dismay with the political climate at the time. Maybe The Candidate is supposed to be narrated in a documentarian sense but even if that’s the case, it fell short for me. Scenes here seem about as interesting as someone who unwraps a stick of gum and chews it.

Perhaps the Oscar was merited due to the political climate at the time. Redford’s character told audiences what they wanted to hear and magically Larner’s screenplay is now brilliant. If that’s the case, then I guess The Candidate is now dated. There’s no way this film outshines other political films like Wag The Dog, Primary Colors, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, or from what I hear Bulworth (never saw it).

The Candidate carries no drama, no comedy, no shock value. I’d say no message either, but the unexpected ending (unexpected only because I didn’t know the end scene was actually the end scene) finally told me something that I laboriously waited a long two hours for. The wait wasn’t worth it.