Even if you think Amy Ryan’s wicked pissah performance in Gone Baby Gone wuz robbed on Oscar night, there’s no denying we’re living in the golden age of Boston crime movies. Mystic River kicked it off, The Departed won the Oscar for Best Picture last year, and now Martin Scorsese is set to direct an adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island starring (who else?) Leonardo DiCaprio. But the granddaddy of all these films remains criminally unknown, rarely screened and never released on home video: The Friends of Eddie Coyle.
Adapted from the novel by Boston crime writer George V. Higgins, the precursor to Lehane and Spenser creator Robert Parker, Coyle is the story of a small-time gun dealer who turns informant when he learns he’s facing a stretch in prison.
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