Very little about these guys says “gangster” in the usual sense, just as very little about Richard Jordan’s here T‑man says “cop.” Because everyone involved in the picture—the aforementioned cast, screenwriter Paul Monash, director Peter Yates (who applied a not-dissimilar sense of understatement to Bullitt several years before)—has an acute awareness that they’re inhabiting the world of George V. Higgins, the attorney-turned-author who wrote the very fine novel on which this picture is based.(The only participant in the film who’s not, alas, in this groove with everyone else is composer Dave Grusin, whose overstated “jazz” score is the sort of thing that gave the electric piano a bad name back in the day.) In Higgins’ world, “the life” is normal life, and he renders its talk, and every other quotidian detail of it, with brisk, unforced accuracy. (Higgins’ cachet among other genre writers and the filmmakers who love them is such that, yes, Elmore Leonard Quentin Tarantino did lift the above-cited character name Jackie Brown for his adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch.) The dialogue is colorful, but not too colorful, and it tells a good deal of the story. But what’s even more important to Higgins’ storytelling, particularly in the very tight early works that made his reputation (the Boston-based author went on to attempt more sprawling works on politics and corruption, with mixed results—A Choice of Enemies is possibly the best of these, and a hell of a read it is) are the silences that fall between the spoken sentences. It’s in these interstices when all of the decisions of the various characters are made: Am I gonna give this guy a break? Am I gonna keep my word? Am I gonna drop dime on him? Am I just gonna drop him?
The movie is suffused with just these silences. And Yates, working with cinematographer Victor J. Kemper, shows a similar sensitivity to physical space, as in the screen cap below. In a highly nondescript, not to say bleak, office, Jordan’s cop Foley discusses Coyle and his case with his superior Waters (Mitchell Ryan, who comes off nothing like Mitchell Ryan here). Jordan is of course wonderful, and the dynamic between the two characters absorbing; but part of me watching was inexplicably drawn to that scrawny, lonely wire hanger on a hook on the wall, between them.
It’s a simple detail that speaks volumes about this wintry, soul-sick world of Higgins’.
Funnily enough, the only place where the film deviates from Higgins’ dialogue is at the very end, when Boyle’s character talks about a guy he read about in the newspaper who’s trying to develop a drug to eliminate pigeons from the world. It’s not a bad piece of writing, but it sticks out like a sore thumb—it’s the only time in the film that any of its characters speak metaphorically! I suppose you can’t blame Monash for wanting to contribute something besides the excellent job of compression he did with Higgins’ meticulously charted, inexorable plot.
The Criterion disc of the picture is excellent (no, duh) and features, aside from Kent’s essay, a largely engaging commentary by Yates, who’s now in his late seventies, and a reprint of a very thorough 1973 Rolling Stone profile of Mitchum, which incorporates a visit to the set of Coyle. Equally overdue and essential, the disc streets on May 19.
Actually, if I’m not mistaken, the character in Leonard’s RUM PUNCH was named Jackie Burke; the Jackie Brown surname was a Tarantino addition, likely in reference in equal parts to both EDDIE COYLE and FOXY BROWN.
There was only this one. It’s a shame this didn’t catch on back in 1973; we could have used more films like it.
I’m thinking about “The Yakuza” another Mitchum – Jordan movie – also underrated.
Love this film, love the novel. Higgins seems to be not too well-known these days, I guess probably because his stuff is generally so dire, but he was one of the best – “Defending Billy Ryan” is another great look at corruption. I’ve actually only read a few of his books, though, so I’d better start burning through the rest.
And I’m also a big fan of “The Yakuza”, John. Always been a favorite, and I don’t get why it’s not thought of more highly. A gritty 70s crime film, mixed with a Samurai movie. What’s not to like?
Holy Crawford—that’s the most elegant frickin’ wire hanger I’ve ever seen.
Pissed that this and WISE BLOOD didn’t merit a Blu-ray release.
Wow, this sounds fantastic. I’m gonna queue it up now.
Great call on the wire hanger, Glenn. Observations like that are a big reason why I enjoy your stuff so much.
Glenn, I recently read the novel, and the Boyle pigeon speech is in there (though the filmmakers moved it to the last scene).
@Bill Weber: Damn. You know, I wondered about that, and before I posted, I scanned the novel looking for it and didn’t find it, and stupidly came to my conclusion. I need to look again now. I will say right now, with some confidence, that as placed by Higgins, its metaphorical weight isn’t quite so heavy.
While I know this thread is dead and gone (four months being a decade in blog-years), I did want to say that my wife and I just saw the film last night– me for the first time, her for the first time since its theatrical run– and it really is an impressive, understated picture.
(SPOILER) I especially like the way Coyle’s last scene is handled– it denies any visceral sense of closure. That’s something that’s done throughout the film, something that’s helped by its somewhat digressive structure– i.e., it’s pretty damn democratic in who it follows where and when; Coyle might be the title character, but he’s no more the main character than Jackie Brown, the cop, the bank robbers, even Peter Boyle’s character. When Coyle meets his fate, it’s not given any more emphasis than when Brown gets arrested, or when the bank robbers get caught. I also like how when Peter Boyle’s duplicity is revealed, it’s not really a revelation at all but a confirmation of what we already knew– denying catharsis for something quieter and more unnerving. (/SPOILER)
I could be mistaken, as it’s been quite a few years, but I think Yates took a similar off-hand, democratic-ensemble approach to MOTHER, JUGS, AND SPEED and BREAKING AWAY. Am I right, or am I just imagining things?
Re-reading my last bit, I realize that I might have been unclear in my phrasing. What I meant to say was, if I recall correctly, MOTHER, JUGS, AND SPEED and BREAKING AWAY also had a digressive structural quality to them that made their various characters “co-leads” without feeling quite as aimless/over-reaching as a lot of ensemble pieces do. And by off-hand I meant that there wasn’t a lot of directorial stylistic heightening– I wasn’t talking about the performances, which are quite a bit broader (yet still convincing) than those in Coyle. And what I meant to ask was, since it’s been a few years since I saw either of those films, am I remembering correctly or am I full of shit?