Based on the debut novel of Boston crime writer George V. Higgins, Eddie Coyle tells the story of its eponymous hero, a banged-up, small-time criminal grinding out chump change. Robert Mitchum and Peter Boyle put in appropriately understated brilliant performances, and my only criticism is that the movie spends too much time away from them while following the details of a string of robberies fueled by the guns that Eddie deals in. The upside of this excursion is a tour of all the depressing backwaters in and around Boston. The downside is that this diversion turned to a trip down memory lane for me as I ruminated on the question that haunted me for the entire year I lived among the Massholes:
How can a major US city be so shitty, and for so long?
