To save his own skin, Coyle turns on his colleagues, unaware of the fact that some of them had also turned to the authorities and become informants. Faced with a prison sentence that would isolate him from his wife and three kids for at least a couple of years, Coyle decides to abandon his cherished principles, break the honorable code of the criminal milieu and try to strike a deal through an ATF agent. In the 45 years that followed, Yates’ movie gained the worldwide recognition as one of the best and toughest crime films of the whole period.Ī middle-aged delivery truck driver called Eddie Coyle makes his extra cash as a low-level gunrunner and general utility go-to guy for a criminal organization set in Boston. The Friends of Eddie Coyle was filmed in Boston and the city’s wider area and it was released in June 1973. What’s especially interesting here is that, due to the extremely tight schedule, Yates decided to use even the scenes with Mitchum’s less-than-perfect deliveries, which ultimately gave the film an obvious rawness and imperfection that accentuated the desired feel of authenticity and gritty, unpolished documentary-style filmmaking that Yates and the crew were going for. With the high efficacy and dedication of Yates and his crew, Mitchum managed to shoot every single one of his designated scenes within the three weeks timeframe. Upon approached, Mitchum first accepted to play the supporting role of Dillon (which ultimately went into Peter Boyle’s hands), because he insisted on a strictly limited three-week shooting schedule, but Yates succeeded at convincing him the central role of Eddie Coyle was more up his alley. Mitchum was apparently looking for something fresh and different from films such as Going Home and The Wrath of God, the two projects that preceded Coyle. Against all expectations, the great Robert Mitchum agreed to shoot it. British master Peter Yates, who had previously established himself as an apt action film director with the acclaimed Steve McQueen vehicle Bullit (1968) and a year older, less famous but highly acclaimed film called Robbery, was chosen for the director’s chair, and what the project needed for an explosive lift-off was a big name in the cast. Having experienced solid success in the field of live television during the fifties, Monash turned to film production, striking gold with the production of George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid back in 1969. Higgins didn’t get the chance to adapt his own novel for the screen, as Monash himself decided to write the shooting script. Higgins started writing at the beginning of the decade, and the qualities of his gritty prose, sparse style and direct no-nonsense approach displayed in The Friends of Eddie Coyle caught the attention of producer Paul Monash, who purchased the rights to the novel for Paramount. Higgins’ crime novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle was well received by critics and the public, featuring a story of the Boston criminal milieu and its detailed mechanics and intricacies composed by a lawyer and a former Assistant Attorney General turned journalist.
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