VEILED THREATS by Phil Mershon
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      • Busting
      • The Ruling Class
      • The Harder They Come
      • Day of the Jackal
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      • The Jezebels
      • Sacco & Vanzetti
      • Badlands
      • Cold Turkey
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    • Five Minutes to Live
    • The Manchurian Candidate
    • Hud
    • Pressure Point
    • Blow Up
    • Requiem for a Heavyweight
    • Hurry Sundown
  • Human Flood
    • Jean-Luc Godard >
      • Breathless
      • Masculine Feminine
      • Film Socialisme
    • Brian De Palma >
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      • A Clockwork Orange
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      • The Player
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      • Duel
    • Oliver Stone >
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    • Orson Welles >
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      • DODES'KA-DEN
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      • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
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      • Rear Window
      • To Catch a Thief
      • The Wrong Man
      • Suspicion
      • Saboteur
      • Lifeboat
      • Notorious
      • Rope
      • North by Northwest
      • Psycho
      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
    • The Big Chill
    • W. C. Fields and Me
    • Zabriskie Point
    • Eat The Document
    • Hitler: The Last Ten Days
    • A Boy and His Dog
    • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
    • The Executioner's Song
    • The Visitors
    • Paul McCartney Really is Dead
    • Going Places
    • Pi
    • Erik the Viking
    • Sometimes They Come Back
    • Thinner
    • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    • A Bullet for Pretty Boy
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THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE
From an article by Dr. Alan F. Philips, from the Project of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation:

    On October 24, 1973, when the U.N. sponsored cease fire intended to end the Arab-Israeli war was in force, further fighting stared between Egyptian and Israeli troops in the Sinai desert. U.S. intelligence reports and other sources suggested that the U.S.S.R. was planning to intervene to protect the Egyptians. President Nixon was in the throes of Watergate episode and not available for a conference, so Kissinger and other U.S. officials ordered DEFCON 3 [Defense Readiness Condition (DEFCON 5 is the peacetime state; DEFCON 1 is a maximum war readiness).] . The consequent movements of aircraft and troops were of course observed by Soviet intelligence. The purpose of the alert was not to prepare for war, but to warn the U.S.S.R. not to intervene in the Sinai. However, if the following accident had not been promptly corrected then the Soviet command might have had a more dangerous interpretation. On October 25, while DEFCON 3 was in force, mechanics were repairing one of the Klaxons at Kinchole Air Force Base, Michigan, and accidentally activated the whole base alarm system. B-52 crews rushed to their aircraft and started the engines. The duty officer recognized the alarm was false and recalled the crews before any took off.


    That paragraph neatly sums up the feeling of what things were like in 1973 far better than the Andrea Killen book 1973 Nervous Breakdown: Watergate, Warhol, and the Birth of Post-Sixties America, although the latter does have its value, despite the hyperbolic title. The United States, the Soviet Union, Israel, Egypt and Syria were all about to blow one another away, each for different reasons, while just a few months earlier, in June of that year, audiences across America were treated to a Bostonian version of the same thing, albeit, on a microcosmic scale. 
    Peter Yates directed The Friends of Eddie Coyle, a film in which Robert Mitchum as the title character could have represented, say Israel, while the gun dealing Jackie Brown might have been Syria, with Egypt played with masterful skill by the always dependable and disturbed Peter Boyle, and the role of the ATF cop, naturally, filled by the USA. The way the characters in this movie move Coyle around the table is excessively heartless, calculated and ultimately without purpose, just as in real life. Now I am not suggesting that Yates gave any thought whatsoever to the geopolitical symbolism I'm assigning to his film. After all, the novel upon which the movie was based was published in 1970 and the events described in the opening block quote had not happened at the time of this motion picture's release. What I am suggesting is that events do sometimes breathe together to create what I'll reluctantly call a zeitgeist, one which in both the instance of the film and the Middle East found everyone making deals with their enemies and using one another in the final analysis for no other practical purpose than to assure his destruction. 
    Eddie Coyle got popped for heisting a delivery truck for Dillon, the Boyle character. Facing the offer of a long prison term for which he has no use, Coyle decides to rat out a gun dealer--and easily the coolest guy in the film--in exchange for a complimentary phone call from the ATF guy. The deal goes down and so does the gun dealer, but the court wants Eddie to turn professional, full-time snitch. Eddie recognizes this is a death sentence, but he gives in anyway, turning over some friends who have been pulling some very clever bank robberies in the area (so clever that they were stolen for use in a subsequent film called Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry). It turns out the ATF guys don't need Eddie for this after all, but the robbers assume Eddie is the snitch and order Dillon to snuff him. Dillon, of course, is already working for the ATF guy and the mob, so we aren't sure what he'll do until he actually does it. 
    The truth is that the geopolitical implications, the personal betrayals and the long hard drop of the highly sympathetic Coyle would not merit holding this film in the public consciousness were it not for the acting skills of the participants, particularly Mitchum. Lesser talents, such as John Wayne and Sylvester Stallone owe most of their "trademark" moves from Mitchum and the latter in particular should admit the debt. I would even go so far as to say that I'd be willing to bet that the other actors in this movie learned something about understating their deliveries from Bob. In any other context, a line like, "April fool, motherfuckers," would sound ridiculous. Here, it makes you want to cry as you see how each layer of development is just one more layer of Eddie Coyle going down. 
    Eddie has played the cards he's been dealt. He hasn't played them as well as they could have been played, true, but he has played them as well as he knew how. We learned his story right away when he explains to the gun dealer that some bad guys smashed his hand in a drawer. "The worst part is you know he's gonna kick that drawer shut. You know it's gonna hurt and it hurts you before it even happens." And God damn Sam, the gun dealer actually thinks about this. He reacts with sudden sympathy. The feeling is quick and gets replaced with other emotions, but it's there and we see it. 
    These people are fascinating, the story holds your attention throughout, somebody even brought Mo Greene in from Vegas to rob the banks, and even the car wrecks are understated so that there isn't one gratuitous instant in the entire film. When you watch The Friends of Eddie Coyle, you may think of one nation or another, you may think of your old neighborhood, or you may simply imagine the tired horror of Eddie's life. The point is that you will be thinking and feeling at the same time. How many movies lately have had that going for them?
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  • Home
  • Links
  • The Deluge
    • Veiled Threats >
      • 1939-1945
      • 1946-1963
      • 1964-1975
      • 1976-1985
      • Born Losers
      • Don't Look Back
      • Bonnie and Clyde
      • Cool Hand Luke
      • The Graduate
      • Up Tight!
      • Cycle Savages
      • Wild in the Streets
      • Never a Dull Moment
      • Yellow Submarine
      • Night of the Living Dead
      • Faces
      • The Love Bug
      • Midnight Cowboy
      • Easy Rider
      • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
      • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
      • They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
      • The Magic Christian
      • Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
      • The Landlord
      • The Ballad of Cable Hogue
      • Getting Straight
      • The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
      • Five Easy Pieces
      • Godard in America
      • Gimme Shelter
      • Little Big Man
      • The Boys in the Band
      • Joe
      • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
      • The Big Boss
      • There's a Girl in my Soup
      • The Liberation of L B Jones
      • Klute
      • The French Connection
      • Willie Dynamite
      • Helter Skelter
      • King: A Filmed Record
      • Get Carter
      • Harold and Maude
      • Panic in Needle Park
      • Across 110th Street
      • And Soon the Darkness
      • Deliverance
      • Rolling Thunder
      • Super Fly
      • Busting
      • The Ruling Class
      • The Harder They Come
      • Day of the Jackal
      • Play Misty For Me
      • The Jezebels
      • Sacco & Vanzetti
      • Badlands
      • Cold Turkey
      • Soldier Blue
      • American Graffiti
      • The Falcon and the Snowman
      • Watership Down
      • Scarecrow
      • Walking Tall
      • Frances
      • The Coca-Cola Kid
      • Bob Roberts
      • Bad Company
      • We Are Marshall
      • Patton
      • The Natural
      • The Crossing Guard
      • Reds
      • The Spook Who Sat by the Door
      • Mud
      • Who is Harry Nilsson
      • Ornette: Made in America
      • Six Degrees of Separation
      • This Film is Not Yet Rated
      • Incident at Oglala
      • That Championship Season
      • The Pope of Greenwich Village
      • Little Murders
      • Assault on Precinct 13
      • Capote
      • Inglourious Basterds
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle
      • Scorpio
      • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
      • A New Leaf
      • Seven Psychopaths
      • The Last House on the Left
      • The Deer Hunter
      • Let the Right One In
      • Colour Me Kubrick
      • A Time to Kill
      • A Scanner Darkly
      • Salem's Lot
      • Roman Polanksi: Wanted and Desired
      • The Seven-Ups
      • The Contender
      • Hoffa
      • The Pledge
      • American: The Bill Hicks Story
      • Donnie Brasco
      • Bugsy
      • Milk
      • Reservoir Dogs
      • Glengarry Glen Ross
      • V for Vendetta
      • Trumbo
      • Two in the Wave
      • South of the Border
      • Into the Abyss
      • God Bless America
  • Before the Deluge
    • The Bicycle Thief
    • Judgment at Nuremberg
    • Five Minutes to Live
    • The Manchurian Candidate
    • Hud
    • Pressure Point
    • Blow Up
    • Requiem for a Heavyweight
    • Hurry Sundown
  • Human Flood
    • Jean-Luc Godard >
      • Breathless
      • Masculine Feminine
      • Film Socialisme
    • Brian De Palma >
      • Sisters
      • The Fury
    • Stanley Kubrick >
      • Lolita
      • 2001: A Space Odyssey
      • A Clockwork Orange
      • The Shining
      • Full Metal Jacket
    • Francis Coppola >
      • The Conversation
      • Apocalypse Now
    • Woody Allen >
      • Take the Money and Run
      • Bananas
      • Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But were Afraid to Ask
      • Sleeper
      • Love and Death
      • Annie Hall
      • Interiors
      • Manhattan
      • Stardust Memories
      • Zelig
      • Broadway Danny Rose
      • The Purple Rose of Cairo
      • Hannah and Her Sisters
      • Radio Days
    • Robert Altman >
      • M*A*S*H
      • Brewster McCloud
      • 3 Women
      • Nashville
      • The Gingerbread Man
      • Ready to Wear
      • Gosford Park
      • The Player
    • Luis Bunuel >
      • The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
    • Roman Polanski >
      • Cul-de-Sac
      • Rosemary's Baby
      • MacBeth
      • The Tenant
    • Martin Scorsese >
      • Boxcar Bertha
    • Steven Spielberg >
      • Duel
    • Oliver Stone >
      • Talk Radio
    • Orson Welles >
      • F For Fake
    • Akira Kurosawa >
      • DODES'KA-DEN
    • Max Ophuls
    • John Ford >
      • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    • John Huston
    • Frank Capra
    • Billy Wilder
    • Roger Corman
    • Bernardo Bertolucci
    • Elia Kazan
    • William Wyler
    • Spike Lee
    • Francois Truffaut >
      • 400 Blows
      • Jules and Jim
      • Bed and Board
    • Jean Renoir
    • Federico Fellini
    • Charlie Chaplin
    • John Cassavetes
    • Agnes Vargas
    • Alain Resnais
    • Eric Rohmer >
      • Claire's Knee
    • Ida Lupino
    • Leni Riefenstahl
    • Penny Marshall
    • Costa-Gavras >
      • The Confession
      • Missing
    • Alfred Hitchcock >
      • Spellbound
      • Shadow of a Doubt
      • The Birds
      • I Confess
      • Dial M for Murder
      • Rear Window
      • To Catch a Thief
      • The Wrong Man
      • Suspicion
      • Saboteur
      • Lifeboat
      • Notorious
      • Rope
      • North by Northwest
      • Psycho
      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
    • The Big Chill
    • W. C. Fields and Me
    • Zabriskie Point
    • Eat The Document
    • Hitler: The Last Ten Days
    • A Boy and His Dog
    • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
    • The Executioner's Song
    • The Visitors
    • Paul McCartney Really is Dead
    • Going Places
    • Pi
    • Erik the Viking
    • Sometimes They Come Back
    • Thinner
    • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    • A Bullet for Pretty Boy
  • Links