Friends of Friends

By * Richard Schickel

THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE

Directed by PETER YATES

Screenplay by PAUL MONASH

Physically he is right for the part. The slope of the belly has grown more acute with the passage of years; the face is puffy and well-worn; even the complexion looks gray, with just a hint of green around the gills. But there is more than mere looks to Robert Mitchum's performance as Eddie Coyle, the aging, small-time hood with a big-time survival problem. The weariness, the hooded cynicism, the underlying toughness that seems to consist more of an ability to survive beatings rather than administer them--all have always been there, unspoken factors in a career that has consisted largely of trying to transcend roles that did not fully engage one of the most active and original intelligences in the star business. Now, at last, Mitchum achieves a kind of apotheosis in Peter Yates' strong, realistic and totally absorbing rendition of George V. Higgins' bestselling novel.

Coyle's nickname is "Fingers," because five of them were mangled as punishment for fouling up a gunrunning operation early in his career. Wary, only partially daunted, in his soldier's way wise to the ways of the underworld, he is still dealing in hot guns, supplying them to a mob specializing in branch bank heists around Boston. Simultaneously, he is trying to beat a bootlegging rap by doing some minimal informing--a thief's honor warring with a middle-aged man's need to put his comfort and his family's needs first.

Coyle could easily have been played as a simple victim, a soft spot at the heart of this picture. But supplied with hard blue language by Writer Monash, and played by Mitchum as a man trying to walk--not run--to the nearest exit, he is an infinitely more appealing figure. Coyle is still hard enough to intimidate a reckless apprentice punk, canny enough to fight a good delaying action against the cop who keeps pressing for more and more information and strangely trusting of an old friend who is a much more clever ex-stoolie (and who finally undoes him). In all, Coyle emerges as a complex and multifaceted character. Self-consciously, with an old pro's quiet skills, Mitchum explores all of Coyle's contradictory facets. At 56, when many of his contemporaries are hiding out behind the remnants of their youthful images, he has summoned up the skill and the courage to demonstrate a remarkable range of talents.

Among Coyle's "friends," Steven Keats is a bundle of raw nerves as the kid crook trying to tough it out in a line of work he is not really mature enough to handle. Richard Jordan exudes the dank and oily atmosphere of a basement where one cannot tell the cops from the crooks they suborn; and Peter Boyle menacingly underplays the man who finally betrays Mitchum.

Peter Yates is not a director who asserts his personality in obvious ways. Eddie Coyle is, like his previous successes in the action genre (Bullitt, Murphy's War), a work which efficiently and unobtrusively establishes an ambiance that helps to explicate behavior. This is not a matter of directorial "touches," but rather a case of careful overall polish that brings out the grain of his raw material. He accomplishes this with no sacrifice to the pacing of his action sequences or the suspenseful development of his story's arc. The Friends of Eddie Coyle should find plenty of friends at the box office this summer.

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