The Friends of Eddie Coyle

Eddie’s friends are numerous, but the term friends is suspect. As a small time hood Eddie is about to go back to jail…

• Director: Peter Yates
• Genre:Crime / Drama / Thriller
• Runtime:102 minutes

Cast

Robert Mitchum : Eddie ‘Fingers’ Coyle
Peter Boyle : Dillon
Richard Jordan : Dave Foley
Steven Keats : Jackie Brown
Alex Rocco : Jimmy Scalise

Eddie Coyle is an aging, low-level gunrunner for a crime organization in Boston, Massachusetts. He is facing several years in prison for a truck hijacking in New Hampshire set up by Dillon, who owns a local bar. Coyle’s last chance is a sentencing recommendation from a cop, Dave Foley, who demands that Coyle become a confidential informant in return.

A gang led by Jimmy Scalise and Artie Van has been pulling a series of robberies in broad daylight at local banks, Coyle having supplied them with guns. Another gun runner, Jackie, is in popular demand. Coyle wants to buy more pistols from him while a younger couple is shopping for machine guns.

Jackie goes to great lengths to get Coyle what he needs. Coyle delivers the guns to Scalise, but then he offers to set up Jackie for the cop Foley to avoid jail. In a train station’s parking lot, waiting to sell his machine guns, Jackie is apprehended by Foley’s men.

Coyle feels he has fulfilled his end of the deal. Foley, though, claims it still isn’t enough. He wants more or else it’s prison for Coyle.

In desperation, Coyle agrees to inform on his friends Scalise and Van as they prepare to pull off their next bank job. But it turns out Foley already has inside information and has caught them in the act. Read more