The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a crime film with structure. There is an issue that happens and different people have different roles in the crime scenario. Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum) decides to tell on his friends to avoid jail time. When he does this, though, his mob friends have family with lives on the line. The criminals, however, are depicted to seem as if they are normal people who have lives, but on the outside world, they have demons out to haunt them based on their judgment in the crime world. This film is detailed in how every character plays a role in this small town of criminals.

Director Peter Yates opens the film with a quiet tone of a character walking to his car. The silence in the film infers shady behavior. That is the tone where I find the suspicion and suspense to take place. That mellow tone leaves audience to be ready for a film with situations that can be disturbing, yet enticing. Later on, the movie brings us to a bar where the mob hang out. The cinematography of the bar is shaded black with some red. That cinematic concept sets the tone for suspense.

The film’s attitude on characters appears to be unreliable. The unreliability of characters later sums up to how everyone in the crime is involved. The film views the main character Eddie Coyle as someone who may be facing jail time for numerous offenses. He is a small time gangster in Boston. Coyle is stressed in curiosity on terms if he is going to be doing jail time or not. We realize his stress as he says, “I done the time and I stood up but I can’t take no more chances.” The relevance of this quote is that Coyle does not want to suffer because he knows he will not be in a pleasant place based on his actions. Especially since he has been there before.

Yates chooses to present the film in a quiet tone to be a different mob movie. Whereas other mob films like Shaft, Scarface, and The Godfather contain tons of shooting and violence. The Friends of Eddie Coyle has some of that, but has more of the conversations and people being held hostage play the suspense in the movie. Instead of frequent shooting of guns and violence, there are talks of guns in the movie. Guns are distributed illegally. When the deals are taking place, the conversations among the topic is relevant, sadistic, and calculated. The negativity of this aspect is shown in the quote where Jackie Brown (Steven Keats) says, “I’ve got more than five machine guns, and the rest are gonna be pointed at YOU.” This moment defines disturbing situations on terms of conversation instead of action.

The film may make viewers think that Coyle is the focus of the film. He is a big deal, but he is not the main focus. The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a title that does not refer much to Coyle, but refers to the people he is snitching on. Also the word “friends” infers that these people can be normal people who live an everyday life. Based on their judgment, though, their enemies are going to come back to make their lives harder.

The filmmakers chose to present The Friends of Eddie Coyle in these manners is because they did not want to make a typical mafia movie. What I mean by this is a film where the focus would only be violence, coarse language, and suggestive content. An example is the movie Shaft. The goal of Shaft was to be harsh and vulgar, which was common for 1970s mafia movies. This caused The Friends of Eddie Coyle to stand out then, because this was a completely different type of mafia movie.

Three and a half stars.

Shaft is a 1971 film starring Richard Roundtree. The film is about John Shaft, a private eye who is hired by a crime lord to find and retrieve his kidnapped daughter. The film illustrates many racial tensions as Shaft attempts to complete his mission. In addition to dealing with kidnappers, Shaft also has to deal with the racism he encounters. The character Shaft helped to change the equation of typical police films and served as a heroic icon for African-American audiences.

Shaft changes the equation of the typical police film of the 1960s because it shows the corruption that existed in that time period. Prior to the 1970s, most cop movies focused on actors that were white. Black characters were often the sidekicks or underlings that worked at the desk. Shaft focused on a black cop. Shaft is gritty, smart, and sarcastic. He is popular with the ladies, but confrontational with the police force. Shaft is hired because he has connections to the projects and he can do things that the authorities cannot. He exposes that being trustworthy of black people seemed risky to the authorities. Shaft succeeds in the face of corruption by structuring his combat.

The film serves as important for African-Americans because of the culture that is illustrated in Shaft. The film gears on struggles related to their culture. The struggles include money, drug-dealing, ransom, and the dangers of the projects. The character Shaft is the key to the film’s depiction of the African-American culture. His rebelliousness, negativity, and violent behavior depicts the importance of the society that African-Americans have lived through. As he walks through the streets and gets denied by a cab driver (he gets denied because he is black), audiences realize the harsh society that African-Americans had to put up with. As Shaft is already self-centered, viewers are able to notice his aggravation with his life. Whites in the film are shown to be absent minded. This is a twist because generally blacks would be shown as the absent minded people during that time period.

Shaft was relevant for the time period because in today’s society, Shaft would not be considered controversial. This is not much of a big deal because society has progressed. Back then, Shaft was made during the Civil Rights Movement. Therefore, when audiences view Shaft, they are taken back to the time period. Shaft was the break through film at the time. It is hard for some to believe that Shaft was a hit back then. This is because it was one of the first movies where someone who is African-American is the lead and given authority.

Many of the movies that have been viewed have focused on current issues particular to the time period of the movies. Each film portrays its own array of conflicts, disconnections, poverty struggles, and lack of resources. When these issues are the focus of the movies though, it creates an enticing experience that viewers can experience when they pay close attention to the movies. The movies I see as examples that are critical of institutions are Chinatown, Blue Collar, and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. All of these films display many dysfunctions and frustrations occurring during a certain time in history. These two elements are not meant to set the plot of these films, but to establish the particular era of them. All three films are critical of institutions.

In Chinatown, the main character JJ Gittes (Jack Nicholson) plays a detective in the 1930s that falls into deceit, corruption, and murder. He is investigating a crime, but when someone chooses to be an impostor, Gittes has a much harder time solving the case he is assigned to. In this time period, there was not much technology to assist in investigating cases. This shows that Gittes is even in a more dramatic situation since there is lack of resources for assistance. What this says is that in this era, cases were not easy for police to resolve. Detectives’ jobs were harder based on the limited resources and that made issues more controversial. This was because they were not able to tell who was innocent or guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

The other film with many dysfunctions is Blue Collar. The film focuses on three characters and they are Zeke (Richard Pryor), Jerry (Harvey Keitel), and Smokey (Yaphet Kotto). These three characters are having issues at their union job of working in a auto manufacturing facility. What happens is that they decide to steal money from the union’s bureau Safe. They believe that they are not getting paid equally based on the work they do. However, their robbery puts them in a shady situation. Once they commit the theft, the union realizes that they have lost ten thousand dollars due to a robbery. The dysfunction of this behavior is chaotic because it is still during the era of race discrimination in the 1970s and both Smokey and Zeke are African-American. Therefore, fingers are being pointed at a variety of characters due to the conflict. There are arguments, a death happens, and people lose their minds where they even break the vending machines of the auto plant. This chaos is caused by the fact that workers feel they are not getting paid equally or receiving the same benefits in the union.

Finally, the movie Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is critical of the workplace. Specifically, it portrays how difficult it was for women trying to find work. Alice (Ellen Burstyn) is someone who is trying to start her career as a singer. However, she has fallen into several bad relationships and is also trying to raise her own son. Her relationships are generally abusive and therefore, she is trying to flee away with her son to start a new life. The corruption she faces includes money and housing issues. The dysfunction she faces is abusive relationships and her chaotic son. Her son chooses to act out since he feels he is not getting attention from her. As she drives with him on the road, he does lots of screaming and has temper tantrums to provoke her. He does this to get her attention. The institution of family is also referenced here as a single mother struggles alone to raise her son.

Overall, the setting of all of these movies provides a backdrop to showcase a variety of different corrupt environments. A lack of resources, inequality, and racism during specific periods in history are incorporated into these movies, which make them critical of institutions. The effect that various institutions (e.g. police department, workplace, family, etc.) have on the characters makes the lives of these characters much more challenging. Each film illustrates how in society where not everybody believes in equality that people’s daily lives are impacted in serious ways.