In Boston, Wrongdoing Done Right

After suffering through The Boondock Saints II, I started thinking about better Boston-themed crime movies. Most modern movie viewers would cite The Departed as the great Boston crime movie, except that a) it's not that great and b) it's a remake of a Hong Kong film. If only Bostonians had better memories, they would say that 1973's The Friends of Eddie Coyle is the best of all the films of life in the Hub's underworld. Indeed, it may well be the best of all Boston movies. Alas, it's very little known. Though Quentin Tarantino references it in Jackie Brown and Criterion recently put the film out on DVD, The Friends of Eddie Coyle remains sorely under-appreciated.

Director Peter Yates elected to shoot Eddie Coyle entirely on location, even though very few scenes feature famous Boston landmarks – we see some the Government Center T stop and the old Garden, but there aren't any car chases through the North End or shootouts in Kenmore Square. Unlike so many "location" films, Eddie Coyle doesn't treat the audience like tourists. The characters are all at home in Boston; we see their world as they see it – humdrum and seedy and boozy – instead of witnessing it from a tour bus.

The cinematography in The Friends of Eddie Coyle is rarely as fancy as in other seventies crime films, but this unobtrusiveness fits. The criminals in this story are not glamorous or even particularly threatening; the title character lives in Quincy and his family is almost on welfare. Don Corleone's office in The Godfather seems a temple or sanctum; the criminal decisions made there seem solemn and momentous. In Eddie Coyle, the lawbreakers spend most of their time in uncrowded bars and cheap restaurants that are shot to look like uncrowded bars and cheap restaurants. Though it's a story of treachery, violence, and betrayal, The Friends of Eddie Coyle lacks the style generally associated with noir. Everything's seedy, but nothing's sexy.

At times, The Friends of Eddie Coyle seems almost like a play. Though the film is compellingly shot, most of it consists of long conversations between various criminals, cops, and hangers-on. Thankfully, the script is fantastic – believable, funny, and intelligent. While there are several policemen in the film, in some ways the viewer has to play detective, figuring out the complex interrelationships and machinations of several unscrupulous characters. The plot isn't terribly complicated or twisty, but never does anyone lay it all out straight for the audience's consideration. It's just as well, as there's only – as far as I can tell – one character who could tell the whole story, and he has very good reasons to stay quiet.

Robert Mitchum plays the film's title character, a worn-out Irish criminal awaiting sentencing for a crime he committed in New Hampshire. Peter Boyle plays his friend and bartender Dillon, Steven Keats plays a gunrunner, and Richard Jordan plays a Treasury detective. Plus there are some student radicals who want machine guns, a group of bank robbers, and – mostly unseen – the Mafia. Eddie Coyle wants to avoid jail time; to do so, he's willing to betray friends and talk to cops, all the while selling guns to some other acquaintances. Things get messy, though the movie's body count is actually quite low.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle has a very good cast, if not a famous one. There are only two "stars" in the movie, and Peter Boyle's role is comparatively small. Mitchum's Coyle is far more likable than a gun dealer and felon should be; he's a working-class stiff with an unconventional job. Even at his worst, there's something in his tired expression that makes you root for Coyle. I wish that Peter Boyle's seemingly-ineffectual Dillon got more screen time; he's quite compelling, especially after some late-movie revelations. He's awkward and balding and cringing, but he's dangerous for all of that. Like most of the film's characters, he's a hypocrite.

I'd praise the script for Eddie Coyle, but screenwriter Paul Monash didn't have all that much to do, as most of the dialogue is lifted from George V. Higgins' very novel. Yes, fans, this is another tandem book/movie review. Elmore Leonard – considered one of the world's best crime writers – has referred to The Friends of Eddie Coyle as "the greatest crime novel ever written." Norman Mailer provided a memorable blurb to Higgins, then a US Attorney in Boston: "What I can't get over is that so good a first novel was written by the fuzz." The novel's plot is slightly more convoluted than the film's; sorting out the plot requires just a little more dedication. If I don't praise it quite so highly as Leonard does, I think it's one of the ten best crime novels that I've ever read. I should, perhaps, admit that I'm a trifle biased towards Higgins, as we share an alma mater.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled movie review.

As much as I enjoyed The Friends of Eddie Coyle, there are a few problems. The Criterion DVD doesn't offer any deleted scenes, though it does provide some stills from them. Presumably the full scenes have vanished. In any case, I get the impression that a slightly longer movie would have been a slightly better one. One major character vanishes after his arrest near the end of the film; I'm not sure that he's ever mentioned again, though he featured in some missing scenes. One later scene originally featured a shootout; I was surprised that such an action-light movie would cut it, though I think Yates made the right choice. He also cut a fairly graphic sex scene, thus showing his commitment to people over sex and spectacle.

Though later films borrow some from Eddie Coyle – Dillon's pigeon monologue wouldn't be out of place in Pulp Fiction – I've never seen anything quite like it. It has a profound sense of place, it avoids most crime movie cliches, it's funny, and it's well-acted. You should watch it.

Catholic Camp in Toronto... I mean Boston

On some days and with some movies, blogging is an act of masochism. Today is one of those days and Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day is one of those movies. Why, oh why, did they ever let Troy Duffy make another movie?

In an earlier piece on Martin McDonagh, I talked about In Bruges as a sort of revisionist Tarantino film – it had humor and ultraviolence and odd conversations, but it had depths utterly lacking in QT's mostly superficial work. Troy Duffy's first film occasionally pretended to mean something, though his dialogue, his cinematography, and his plot were all far weaker than Tarantino "classics" like Pulp Fiction. In the ten years since Duffy made The Boondock Saints – and alienated half of Hollywood – he hasn't improved. If anything, he's moved backwards. The action sequences remain weak, the dialogue is still thoroughly unfunny, and Duffy has removed all the first film's (barely perceptible) nods to moral ambiguity.

There's not all that much to distinguish the second Boondock film from the first, aside from a substantially more ridiculous plot, which is sporadically interrupted by sepia flashbacks to Billy Connolly's character's youth. These flashbacks – ostensibly to the sixties – look like they're taking place in the twenties or thirties. We may be supposed to feel something – the flashbacks tell of the making of an assassin – but they're awkwardly staged, lit, and shot. At least they make more sense than the entirely random dream sequence pep talk Duffy introduces solely so he can bring back a dead character from the first film. But the film's worst moment comes in its final twist and revelation. It involves Catholic assassins (maybe like this?), a celebrity cameo, and a sequel hook. The implied follow-up looks to be even worse than this film.

There are a lot of things to hate in Boondock Saints II, but I think its most galling trait is its fundamental dishonesty. The film's two main "characters" are supposed to be quintessential Boston Irish, but we can only tell because a) they have Latin- and Catholic-themed tattoos, b) they drink a lot, and c) they spend some time as shepherds in Ireland. Troy Duffy tries hard to give the film a Boston identity, but it simply won't happen; he shot in Toronto, and it shows. His cinematic "Boston" consists of stock footage of downtown and a generic skyscraper that stands in for the Prudential Tower. And, to be fair, there's about two seconds of a news report that shows an actual MBTA train. But at least Duffy knows his Boston slang, right? When the film makes a character speak of "Beantown," it's so shoehorned, unnatural, and poorly-delivered that it becomes unintentionally funny. Sorry Troy, but all the spokes have fallen off from your Hub.

As atrocious as Duffy's portrayal of Boston is, his take on Catholicism is far worse. One gets the sense that in Duffyland, murder is some sort of eighth sacrament. All the priests collude in the protagonists' rampages. According to the film's ending, the titular Saints are somehow following the Catholic party line by ventilating mobsters. Damn, I never knew the catechism was so bloodthirsty. Duffy fills his movie with shots (often slow-motion close-ups) of clerics, collars, crucifixes, and confessionals, but it doesn't mean anything. Then again, what does have meaning in this utterly empty film?

Boondock Saints II is, in theory, an action movie. Unfortunately, the action is pretty awful. There're a lot of slow motion shots, but none of them are graceful or interesting enough to justify the slowdown. Most of the the movie's bullets are aimed at the camera; the average shootout is a few shots of the Saints yelling and shooting in silent slow-mo interspersed with reaction shots of mobsters and criminals falling backward. Only rarely do shooters and shot share a frame. There's nothing inventive or intense about the movie's shootouts. They would be far better if Duffy had dropped his slow-motion gimmick – at least then the pain would be over more quickly.

There's plenty more to complain about in Boondock Saints II. Troy Duffy has quite a few misguided beliefs. He seems to think we care about his protagonists' backgrounds. We don't. He believes we have never watched The Closer on TNT, so we won't notice how much Julie Benz (as an FBI agent) rips off Kyra Sedgwick's role in that show. He thinks gross-out humor to make 90's Adam Sandler blush is funny. And worst of all, he somehow imagines that people will want to see a sequel to this film. Saints preserve us.

In one of my first reviews here, I called Taken a "good bad movie." This is a bad bad movie. Perhaps a discerning viewer could enjoy it inebriated or ironically; it could be a midnight double-feature with The Room or the first Boondock Saints. But instead let us hope that the world forgets this film. Somehow, though, I doubt it will. The audience I watched the movie with seemed to really and honestly enjoy it. What ever will become of us?