The Friends of Eddie Coyle

Yates' downbeat dissection of Boston's underworld, based on the novel by George V Higgins, revolves around the dilemma of Mitchum's weary small-time mobster and all-time loser Eddie 'Fingers' Coyle (somebody shut a drawer on his hand), under pressure to turn stoolie in the wake of a couple of murderous bank heists. The cast lend the film an authority that Yates' curiously pedestrian approach fails to provide, and Mitchum's agonies over codes of underworld honour segue perfectly into his subsequent explorations of loyalty and obligation in The Yakuza. PT.