DVD: The Friends of Eddie Coyle

The cheerless The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a film which the description "slow-burn" could have been coined for. Watching the story of Robert Mitchum’s low-level criminal Eddie “Fingers” Coyle unfold is a sombre experience but when the climax comes, it is shocking. Coyle is a cog in a machine; a piece of chewing gum to be spat out and trodden on. Anyone and everyone is expendable in his world.

Everyone in this noir-ish film looks unhealthy. Grey skin tones and the pallid dominate. Hair is greasy. Interiors are lit by strip lights which accentuate the washed-out tones. Materialisations of daylight and the verdant come like bolts of white light.

Based on a recently published book by George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle was released in 1973 and directed by Peter Yates (1929-2011). The film was made where the story was set: in Boston and its surrounding area. The UK-born Yates’ Robbery (1967, based on the Great Train Robbery) and Bullitt (1968) are his lasting contributions to the crime-thriller genre, but this is a contender for being considered as significant a film as those. Its power does not just come from its naturalistic style, but also from Mitchum’s deadpan, bordering on fatalistic, performance. Though in his mid-50s, he projects the weariness of someone whose life has been longer, and very hard. It was a persona he also dipped into for his next film, The Yakuza (1974).

This new dual-format UK release is supplemented by a thick book with an insightful essay and an interview with Yates. The extras are different to those of the American Criterion package (there is no commentary) and include a career-spanning interview with Yates filmed at the-then National Film Theatre and a fascinating, specially filmed to-camera appreciation by the American critic Glenn Kenny which should not be watched before the film.

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