Why 'Friends of Eddie Coyle' is the foundational Boston crime movie

To celebrate, analyze and better understand Boston's depiction in film, we are talking about what movies set in Boston can tell us about the city's cinematic representation, and how that does, or doesn't, reflect our actual community.

For Radio Boston's "Set in Boston" series, we discuss "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" with film critics Ty Burr and Allyson Johnson. Burr says the 1973 film is foundational to Boston crime movies.

On why "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" is foundational to Boston crime movies:

Burr: "It is the first Boston crime movie and the template for everything that followed. Really it took a decade or two to kick in, but all of the movies that people think of as 'Boston movies,' especially everybody in the rest of the country — I'm thinking 'Mystic River,' and I'm thinking 'Gone Baby Gone,' and 'The Town,' and 'The Departed'... they all have their roots in 'The Friends of Eddie Coyle,' and not just the movie ... the characters, the attitude, the locations, it's all there in this one movie. ... It came from a book written by George V. Higgins, who [worked] in the state's attorney office and knew these people."

Johnson: "Yeah it's a really lean movie and it's sad and tragic and I feel like it just gets this realism with people in the area. I just think there's a humanity in how swiftly everything just goes downhill. They don't play it out."

On the overt racism and masculine tones in the film:

Johnson: "Honestly, it wasn't a film that I had gravitated towards in the past. Kind of — not to gender films — but it's a white guy movie, and there's other films out there that I haven't seen yet. But I ended up really liking this one because I think it never condones any of the actions. It's never showing it in a glamorous lifestyle. The whole point of this is how miserable it is. You know, I think there are plenty of films that do glamorize this lifestyle, that do glamorize the triumph of bad white men who get to live large and on their terms. But in this case, it's a guy on the outskirts. And I think by making him seem so down on his luck and somebody who doesn't even really want any part of what he's doing.

"The fact that we know from the start that there's this sense of gloom, it made it easily digestible. Because there are plenty of films out there where they're not condoning the actions, they're not condoning the racism, it's used just for shock. And so, in this case, it's a little bit more easy to take in."

On the stereotypical elements this film set for Boston crime dramas:

Burr: "The aspects of the Boston crime movie that are laid out in 'The Friends of Eddie Coyle,' and really by George V. Higgins — you really have to credit him with it, and the movie sticks extremely closely to the book — the setting: it's not downtown. The one downtown place we see in 'The Friends of Eddie Coyle' is Government Center, which at that point was new, but that Brutalist architecture was hardly pretty. It's de glamorized locations: The Kentucky Tavern on the corner of Mass. Ave. and Newbury Street, which no longer exists; the Boston Bowl, on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester, which still does exist. All these places where people actually live, and location shooting is incredibly important to a Boston crime movie. That sense that you're in neighborhoods where people live, not where they work, where they live.

"The characters have to not trust each other. And I think that's sort of a given in the genre, too, is that there's this low-level paranoia that there is nobody that you can trust. It is a white guy genre and I think that carries a lot of truth. And the better films acknowledge that in ways subtle and less subtle ... And there is a sense of lowering of doom that in this movie is most explicit. But I think in other movies, even when there's a 'satisfying ending,' a lot of characters don't make it out. It is a fatalistic genre."

On the Boston accent used in the film: 

Burr: "Honestly, I think [Robert] Mitchum does a really good job in part because he doesn't push it. He wears it very, very lightly. You only hear it in certain words. As you mentioned, grading Boston accents and movies — it's a spectator sport in this area. And we all have our worst offenders — Kevin Costner in 'JFK,' Rob Morrow [in 'Quiz Show'] ... it's just the worst."