THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE (1973) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Peter Yates
Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan,
Steven Keats, Alex Rocco, Joe Santos
A low-level Boston hoodlum who makes his living selling guns to bank robbers tries to cut a deal with a government agent in exchange for a break on a prison sentence. Mitchum gives one of his best performances as a guy who's fucked and knows it, but it's really an ensemble piece, with Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan, Steven Keats and Alex Rocco all scary good as the kind of "friends" you'd be better off not knowing. Yates' direction is low-key and functional, and the world he creates is a self-contained nightmare that plays by its own crooked rules. And the masks, one of the few things in the movie that comes close to comedy: You can't rob a bank in this movie unless the robbers are all wearing matching masks.
