THE EXORCIST - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Original Theatrical Version of Friedkin Horror Classic Perfect! No Need To See "Extended Director's Cut" at TIFF Bell Lightbox. Just watch the original theatrical version. At home. Alone. On Blu-Ray.

THE EXORCIST is the best horror movie ever made!

The Exorcist (1973)
Dir. William Friedkin
Scr. William Peter Blatty
Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Jason Miller, Max von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb,
Father William O'Malley, Kitty Winn, Jack MacGowran, Peter Masterson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

No matter how many times I see William Friedkin's The Exorcist, it's like I'm seeing it for the very first time which, on a big screen, first-run, at the age of 14, beats pretty much any experience I've ever had. The picture not only chills to the bone, but it's so gorgeously crafted that seeing the movie is like being under hypnosis from beginning to end. I can't take my eyes off the screen - every beat, every cut, every shot, every sound infuses me with sheer, utter horror and its astonishing set pieces keep delivering a kind of explosive excitement that blows away the comparatively meagre joys bestowed via orgasm. Goddamn it, who needs orgasms when The Exorcist exists?

Thanks to William Peter Blatty's best-selling novel and screenplay adaptation, there is nobody alive on this earth who doesn't know what they're going to see - the simple, compulsive story about a demon that possesses 12-year-old Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair), then compels her to commit some of the most vile acts imaginable until her mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn), in desperation (having exhausted every medical "cure"), turns to Fathers Karras and Merrin (Jason Miller, Max von Sydow) priests from the Jesuit Order, to do battle with the evil that's invaded her child. On the surface, that's pretty much it, though Blatty also managed to flesh out the narrative coat hanger with a host of beautifully etched characters to keep our eyes glued via our hearts and minds.

Not to downplay Blatty's writerly achievements, but the movie is finally as great as it is because of William Friedkin's command of cinematic language. This man knows how to use his camera to rip our very guts out and there are few American directors who have been able to so as consistently and successfully as he has. Film after film (The French Connection, Sorcerer, To Live and Die in L.A., Cruising, Killer Joe), William Friedkin manages to slam us repeatedly in the face with a two-by-four and eventually send us soaring out of the cinema with a buoyancy most filmmakers can't even dream about, much less achieve.

My most recent helping of The Exorcist was, in this day and age, the best possible way to see it. I sat alone in my house, at night, with my telephone off, every light extinguished, the sound cranked and braced upright in a not-too-comfortable position (when we worship, we're not supposed to be comfy) in front of my HD monitor as the Blu-Ray player began spinning. Though I'd have loved to see it on a big screen, my only recent option would have been the TIFF Bell Lightbox special Cinematheque screening and alas, I'd have had, in that venue, to see it with other people in a rarefied atmosphere of "knowing" cineastes - a far cry from repeated screenings during the film's first year of release in a 2000-seat, packed-to-the-rafters picture palace and surrounded by audiences silently observing the proceedings - silently except for those moments when you'd hear hundreds of people gasping and screaming.

Even more problematic about seeing it at TIFF is their egregious choice to screen the "extended Director's Cut" (billed somewhat erroneously on their website sans the word "extended"). Nothing beats Friedkin's 121-minute theatrical cut. The near-horrendous 132-minute "extended Director's Cut" not only destroys the film's impeccable pace, but adds several sequences that should have remained as optional special features on Blu-Ray/DVD releases. The worst additions include the infamous "spider walk", a clunky dialogue scene between the exorcists twixt bouts in the little girl's bedroom and worst of all, an obvious "positive" ending.

Usually billed as The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen, this version of the film is only worth seeing for the exercise of viewing a director ruining what was already perfect (lest we forget Spielberg's not-so-special Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Special Edition or George Lucas's nutty tinkering with Star Wars). This so-called "Director's Cut" of The Exorcist has no place in a Cinematheque - the version being screened is little more than a cash-grab and a perverse nod to appease original writer-producer Blatty.

Oh, but the original theatrical version is a treat - a treat to end all treats! The opening scenes in Northern Iraq as Father Merrin presides over an archeological dig is still one of the creepiest sequences ever committed to film. The blazing sun, the sand and grit, the sweat pouring off everyone's faces, the desperation with which the good Father shoves heart pills down his gullet, the discovery of an evil-infused artifact, horses charging out of nowhere down a narrow street, armed Iraqi soldiers cocking their rifles, wild dogs snarling, growling and fighting in the desert and Merrin's face-to-face regard of an oversized sculpture of the demon Pazuzu, its grim visage and huge, erect lance-like penis; images crafted to jangle and disorient us, naturalistic sounds to shred our eardrums and a documentary-like eye to make us believe - really believe!

And in the words of Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer: "You ain't seen nothing yet!"

Friedkin's cameras take us from these exotic sites and plunge us into the world of Washington D.C.'s leafy, "safe" Georgetown neighbourhood and he begins the ever-so slow burn as a happy child transforms into a hideous, scarred demon - spewing vomit and expletives and yes, eventually masturbating with a crucifix, shoving her mother's horrified face into her bleeding vagina, demanding she lick the crimson oozing from between her legs.

And almost as horrifying are the battery of medical assaults upon the child, as nasty and intrusive as those of the demon, captured with a clinical Neo-realist fervour by a director at the top of his game.

Oh, and the exorcism! The chants and Holy Water, so rhythmically entrancing that I found myself, time and time again, on the edge of my seat, filled with creepy-crawly gooseflesh and my eyes welling up with tears.

Oh, this is cinema! In all its glory!

And to watch The Exorcist is indeed the ultimate experience of giving oneself to the visceral, the spiritual, the kaleidoscopic joy and horror of worship.

This is what it's all about!

This is cinema!

THE FILM CORNER RATING:
(Theatrical Cut): ***** 5-Stars
(Extended Director's Cut): ** 2-Stars

The Exorcist (Extended Director's Cut) is a TIFF Cinematheque Special Screening at TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto. Skip it. Just see the original theatrical cut of The Exorcist on the Warner Bros. magnificent Blu-Ray "The Complete Anthology" which has everything you'd ever want - a completist's wet dream.

COFFY - Review By Greg Klymkiw @ Electric Sheep Magazine - Pam Grier Cleans Up Good

PAM GRIER is COFFY, a lean, mean, KILLING machine with a soul that’s ALL WOMAN. By day, she’s a caring, highly skilled inner-city nurse, but by night, she transforms into a DEADLY show-no-mercy VIGILANTE who takes on the whole underworld --- thug by thug --- pusher by pusher --- gangster by  gangster --- corrupt politician by corrupt politician --- john by john & PIMP by DIRTY, STINKING PIMP.

READ GREG KLYMKIW'S blistering **** RAVE REVIEW @ ELECTRIC SHEEP - a deviant view of cinema by clicking HERE.

READ GREG KLYMKIW'S REVIEW @ ELECTRIC SHEEP - a deviant view of cinema by clicking HERE

THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Crime Classic on Criterion Blu-Ray

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)
dir. Peter Yates
Starring: Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan, Steven Keats, Alex Rocco

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The fate of Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum) is clear as he strides into frame from out of the pitch black Boston night at the beginning of the grim 1973 Peter Yates-directed crime drama. It's as if his downward trajectory has been infused in his very DNA; signed, sealed and delivered at birth with a profound and palpable inevitability.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a masterpiece.

Robert Mitchum inhabits every inch of Eddie: heavy-lidded, baggy-eyed, paunchy, world-weary and shuffling with the gait of a once-physically-powerful man now consigned to the throbbing aches of late middle age. Under the cold glare of fluorescent lights in a 24-hour cafeteria, Eddie places a slice of rubbery pie and a cup of coffee onto his tray and sits at the table occupied by Jackie Brown (Steven Keats), a dark-haired, gap-toothed, bug-eyed young thug.

Wolfing his pie down between slurps of watery coffee, Eddie’s manner is been-there-done-that as he negotiates with the thug to purchase an ordnance of powerful and highly illegal handguns. Jackie is clearly an upstart, oozing bravado – peppering it with promises he might clearly not be able to keep. Eddie sets him straight - almost like a schoolteacher lecturing his young charge. Holding his battered fist in front of the thug, Coyle explains he has twice the number of knuckles most people have. Eddie's nickname is "Fingers". His hand was crushed - punishment for lousing up a job based on false promises.

But Eddie’s not bitter. It’s business, he explains. It’s the life he chose in the only world he ever felt comfortable in. But now, Eddie needs a big score and he needs favours. If he can’t get them, he’s headed straight for hard time. By trade, Eddie's a Teamster truck driver. Unfortunately, he took the wrong driving gig and now he's looking at five years in stir. His wife will have to collect welfare and his kids will face the cruel taunts of their classmates for having a no-account Dad. It would seem Eddie needs a miracle. He needs more than that, though. What Eddie really needs are friends. Right now, he has none – at least none that he can count on.

Promises are cheap. So is life.

Robert Mitchum, one of the screen’s most legendary and charismatic actors has played everything from cops to cowboys to soldiers and everything in between (including his stunning turns as the evil Max Cady in Cape Fear and the malevolent psycho lay preacher in Night of the Hunter). Eddie Coyle is a role that not only fits Mitchum like a well-worn baseball glove but is, I truly believe, his best role and quite probably his greatest performance. Mitchum serves up a hardened criminal – albeit a marked, desperate one who knows what he needs to survive, even if it means succumbing to the lowest rung of his kind and turning stool pigeon to cops who seem, frankly, no better than the criminals they seek to incarcerate.

Mitchum pulls out all the stops, by plugging all of them in. He is, quite simply, less-is-more incarnate; taking his time, listening deeply to his fellow actors, pulling subtle shifts in emotion that register so deeply with us we can feel his pain, frustration, strength, sadness and finally, desperation.

As a director, Peter Yates was certainly no stranger to the crime genre when he made The Friends of Eddie Coyle. He’d already directed the Donald Westlake heist picture The Hot Rock, the gritty British-produced Robbery (a realist, almost semi-documentary-styled dramatization of 1963’s notorious “great train robbery” starring Stanley Baker), numerous episodes of such classic TV crime series as Danger Man and (one of my personal favourites) The Saint. Last, but certainly not least, Yates helmed Bullitt, the slam-bang Steve McQueen detective thriller that set the bar for all cinematic car chases that would follow.

There was always, however, another side to Yates who gave us the gentle comedy of Breaking Away and the tragic gay love story The Dresser. It is finally this combination of the macho stylist and the gentle humanist that made Yates a natural to direct The Friends of Eddie Coyle. These seemingly dichotomous qualities Yates possessed are probably what make the picture so great.

The other, of course, is Yates's gift with details and realism, especially getting the most out of locations. While Bullitt, showcased Steve McQueen’s baby blues, Jacqueline Bisset’s feminine perfection and a car chase that has seldom been matched, it most brilliantly and stunningly extolled the virtues of the city of San Francisco.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is set in Boston and the last time I checked, it was and is a city of great beauty. You’d never know it from Yates's grim eye. He goes well out of his way to show us a Boston that nobody, save perhaps Eddie Coyle and other underworld denizens would bother to live in.

In seedy cafes, dank bars, endlessly indistinguishable parking lots, near-tenement slums, lifeless suburbs, abandoned cement factories, bowling alleys, cold, almost Kafkaesque inner-city financial district public squares and other equally unflattering locales, Yates and gritty, versatile cinematographer Victor (Dog Day Afternoon, The Gambler) Kemper train their lens on the non-descript and do so with harsh light, available light or no light at all. And lots of grain. Glorious chunks of swirling, dancing grain.

Of course, it makes perfect sense within the context of this world that "business" would always be done in plain view, in public places or, for especially sordid dealings, no man's land. It's not as if these guys have offices. They do, however, have homes. Eddie's home is clearly incongruous with his lifestyle - a clean, small two-story post-war job in an older city suburb with a loyal wife doing the ironing in the cramped, but homey kitchen and the Irish Catholic iconography in the hallway above a telephone set upon a tiny little desk and a patch of yard out front from where Eddie can watch his kids clamber onto their school bus. This is not a place for him to do his dirty business.

Paul Monash’s excellent script beautifully distills George V. Higgins novel of the same name. Higgins, a former prosecuting attorney turned crime writer always displayed a knack for dialogue that crackled with life and constructed narratives that defied typical crime story structures.

One of the astonishing things about Monash's adaptation of Higgins's novel and Yates's adherence to the literary sources is the strange focus upon the nasty, brutal crimes committed as a result of Coyle’s efforts. Coyle is peripherally involved as a supplier to the criminals, but Yates and his writers lavish considerable attention and detail upon the various bank robberies that take place – none of which ever directly involve the title character. Not only is this an opportunity for Yates to dazzle us with the slam-bang virtuosity of his many gifts as a filmmaker, but narratively and cinematically, it drives the nails of truth into us - that Eddie's dealings have serious consequences. His crimes are very real and not at all without victims.

And though our “hero” never gets so much as a moment to brandish a weapon, (which is, in and of itself highly unconventional for any crime picture), we are flung back to the reality and inevitability of Coyle’s eventual demise. Yates never lets us forget just how doomed poor Eddie is. Nowhere is this more haunting and downright moving than the heart-achingly tragic sequence where Coyle’s “friend”, the two-timing killer Dillon (Peter Boyle) takes him to a Boston Bruins hockey game (replete with "Number 4" Bobby Orr on the ice). As the game unfurls before cheering fans, Dillon plies Eddie with endless pints of beer and engages in pleasantries, all the while knowing that at the end of the evening, he has been entrusted with the mission to blow Eddie Coyle’s brains out.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw The Friends of Eddie Coyle as a kid with my ex-cop Dad. It was a movie that stayed with me and haunted me for the 40+ years since first seeing it. What I don’t think I’ll ever forget was my Dad’s response at the end of the movie. “That’s the way it is, kid, that’s just the way it is,” he said to me, with more than a little sadness in his voice, and with many long years under his belt dealing with guys just like Eddie Coyle.

Seeing the movie now, those words still hold true. I see Eddie, lumbering through his own Palookaville, the inevitability of his doom and those same words emblazoned, no doubt, upon his own brain.

That’s just the way it is.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5 Stars

"The Friends of Eddie Coyle" is available on a superbly transferred Criterion Collection Blu-Ray which features a lovely, informative commentary track recorded in 2009 by director Peter Yates.

TEN FROM YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TJFF 2014 - Toronto Jewish Film Festival 2014

Ten From Your Show of Shows (1973) *****
Dir. Max Liebman, Prod. Pat Weaver, Writers: Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Carl Reiner
Starring: Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris

Review By Greg Klymkiw

To coin a phrase from the title of Alan Zweig's recent documentary masterpiece, be prepared to experience - beyond all your wildest hopes and dreams - a time when Jews were funny. I mean funny!!! Really, really funny.

If there is anything on television today that's even a pubic hair as brilliant as Your Show of Shows, I'd like to know what it is. Watching this 1973 feature length compilation of ten classic sketches from the immortal variety series that aired on NBC from 1950-1954, I was delightfully transported to a time and place when comedians could have you in stitches just by appearing on-screen - completely in character and bearing the gait and posture that offered a mere taste of the hilarity to come. Each sketch is a perfectly crafted gem with a solid narrative coat hanger by which to display gags of the highest order and performed with the kind of chemistry and zeal that seems so lacking in contemporary comedy. These were giants, kings and gods of the universe of laughter.

Astonishingly, the show was performed in a real theatre, with a real audience and broadcast LIVE to the world and even more amazing is that the company of actors NEVER ad-libbed - they stuck completely to the brilliant scripts and meticulous choreography of both the basic blocking and the kind of slapstick that modern comedians can only dream of being able to pull off.

Much of this is attributable to the direction of Max Liebman, a pioneer of live television comedy who knew that the very best way to capture the material was to use the camera like a closeup proscenium and most of all, to place a great deal of emphasis on rehearsal to nail every dramatic and comic beat with perfection and to ensure that the performers hit their marks perfectly - after all, when the show is going out live to millions, there are NO second chances. Liebman is, in some ways, the real unsung genius of contemporary screen comedy. He not only directed the precursor to "Your Show of Shows" (a ninety-minute two part live broadcast with Jack Carter in Chicago and Caesar, Coca and Reiner in New York), but he spent eons producing live comedy and variety reviews in the Poconos where he cut his teeth on sketch comedy that demanded perfection.

Though the cast features an excellent array of many regular performers and guest stars, the quartet who led the Show of Shows charge were Sid Caesar, always taking the skewed leading man role, the leggy plasticine-faced Imogene Coca in the equally skewed leading lady roles, the deadpan, pole-up-the-butt Carl Reiner always an authority figure and last, but not least, the genius that was Howard Morris who could do just about anything (and did).

The collection of sketches provided here is no mixed bag of nuts in terms of quality - each and every one is a scrumptious morsel and these rich comic comestibles are beautifully assembled to provide a perfect arc of laughs from beginning to end, but also offer-up the sort of amazing scope of material that this team of artisans attacked.

I'll describe three sketches to give you a sense of what you're in for.

The first sketch in the compilation is a lovely sampling of a simple two-hander where we learn that wifey Coca has ploughed the family car through the front window of a liquor store. When hubby Caesar gets home from a hard day on Madison Avenue, Coca needs to do everything in her power to keep hubby from driving the car, but to also test the waters as to just how furious he's going to be when he hears the news. At one point, she goes so far as to recount the accident in a third person narrative to see how hubby reacts. Caesar hilariously laughs off the tale of woe, commiserating with the poor schmuck who is, no doubt, smarting over the knowledge that he let his dumb wife actually drive the car.

Uh-oh.

Hilarity ensues even more at this point, though the tale offers up an extremely satisfying and touching conclusion.

The centrepiece sketch is one of the earliest examples of a movie parody, a brilliant spoof of Fred Zinneman's adaptation of James Jones's From Here To Eternity with Carl Reiner hilariously pinning a row of medals into Sid Caesar's flesh, a magnificent USO dance-club scene that offers-up Caesar and Reiner's rivalry over dime-a-dance gal Coca and during the rendition of the famous beach scene, Caesar shows up in a rubber ducky tube around his waist and once he and Coca settle in for some amore, they're repeatedly interrupted by bucket loads of water splashed in their faces. (Oh, and I'm just guessing here, but chances are good that most of this sketch was written by head writer Mel Brooks, cinema's king of movie parodies like Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein.)

The concluding sketch is pure slapstick genius. It's a parody of the Ralph Edwards program "This is Your Life" which gives us a healthy glimpse at the huge theatre and audience assembled for the live broadcast by including a big scene offstage and on the orchestra floor, but also provides a marvellous all-you-can-eat offering of the magnificent Howard Morris and his unbelievably insane ability to render physical comedy. In this case, he's so monkey-like that he gives the overrated Planet of the Apes reboot star Andy Serkis a major run for his money. Morris doesn't need CGI - the guy simply transforms into a variety of simian poses in the unlikeliest of settings.

These then are but three of ten great sketches and I can't think of a single one that doesn't offer up huge laughs. One sketch is presented in silent movie pantomime style, another offers the quartet as clock pieces on a German clock that's just not working, another is a two hander with Caesar and Morris as the most rigid, pole-up-the-butt Germans imaginable, another involving Morris wagging a huge dill pickle in front of a very hungry Sid Caesar's face - the list goes on. Laughs galore.

I remember first seeing this compilation when it played first-run at a movie theatre in Winnipeg. I was maybe 13 or 14 years old and I still remember the great feeling of being in a cinema in the North End seeing this work for the first time, rolling on the floor with laughter and surrounded by mostly older people who seemed to be laughing so loud that in retrospect, (this was long before the advent of "Depends") I now wonder just how many of them were able to control their bladders. My recent helping of Ten From Your Show Of Shows certainly provided my own bladder with challenges, so anyone planning to catch the TJFF screening of this great 90 minutes of pure hilarity would be best advised to, shall we say, come prepared for any expulsions triggered by laughter.

As live television during the Golden Age proved time and time again, anything was possible.

Ten From Your Show Of Shows plays the Toronto Jewish Film Festival (TJFF) 2014. For fix and info visit their website HERE.

PARAMOUNT GAME NIGHT COLLECTION - Baseball Films Reviewed By Greg Klymkiw: FEAR STRIKES OUT & Original BAD NEWS BEARS Homeruns, BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY & MAJOR LEAGUE Ball Fours, HARD BALL, BAD NEWS BEARS sequels & remake all Strikeout.

It's the middle of a cold, dark winter.

Hockey is in full swing.

Baseball is a dim memory.

It seems as good an excuse as any to haul out the old Paramount Home Video nine-movie DVD box set entitled the Game Night Collection as a cinematic post-coital cigarette and pillow talk to the main event which occurred, it seems, so long ago.

Rating of Collection: **1/2
Ratings of Individual Films:
Fear Strikes Out (1957) dir. Robert Mulligan ****
Major League (1989) dir. David S. Ward **1/2
Hardball (2001) dir. Brian Robbins *
Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) dir. John D. Hancock **
Bad News Bears (1976) dir. Michael Ritchie ***1/2
Bad News Bears (2005) dir. Richard Linklater *1/2
Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977) dir. Michael Pressman *
Bad News Bears Go to Japan (1978) dir. John Berry *1/2

Review by Greg Klymkiw

As someone who has virtually no interest in sports I'm still a sucker for great American sports pictures since the addition of story, character, mise en scene and on occasion, pure big-screen hokum become a perfect substitute for watching the thing itself. It's a genre that can delve into that one area of sports I actually find fascinating - the WORLD of sports – that is, everything about and around the sport rather than the sport itself.

American cinema is, of course, overflowing with sporting activities as a backdrop, but it's probably safe to say that baseball and football are – by far – the most popular activities to Uncle Sam's worshippers. In the movies, if football is analogous to war as it so often is (think Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday as a great example), baseball occupies a somewhat loftier, though gentler metaphorical position than football – that of LIFE itself. Winning is nice, but how you play the game is just as, if not MORE important.

When this box set presented itself to me a few years ago, I was pretty excited since I had seen many of these films when I was a child and had fond memories of them. I was also looking forward to catching up with a few of the newer titles I had heretofore missed and to take a new look at a couple of the more recent offerings. Ploughing through the whole box, my initial hopes weren’t necessarily dashed, but the collection turned out to be a pretty mixed bag.

Happily, in all such sets, there’s usually one Crown Jewel in the mix and this box is no exception.

While I’ve always had happy halcyonic thoughts about Fear Strikes Out, this most recent viewing yielded one of those rare experiences wherein the benefits of age (mine and the film’s) allowed for a whole new appreciation of this masterpiece of the 1950s. The inspiring true story of Jimmy Piersall (Anthony Perkins), a star hitter, shortstop and outfielder for the Boston Red Sox who made it to the top with his insanely demanding, driven father (Karl Malden) goading him on, resulted in a highly public nervous breakdown. It's the stuff movies are made of and Fear Strikes Out delivers big-time.

The relationship between father and son often provides highly-charged drama, but as portrayed in this extraordinary movie, it chills to the bone with its portrait of a father pushing his son out of both love and selfishness to dizzying heights of fame on the surface, while deep-down, shoving his son into a deep, dark closet mired in fear and intimidation.

Karl Malden as Dad and Anthony Perkins as Jimmy electrify the screen with their searing, staggering performances. As horrendous as Dad is, Malden still infuses the character with a warmth and humanity that makes the character all the more recognizable to anyone who has experienced that special love-hate tug with their own father. Perkins, in a role pre-dating his turn as the nut-job in Hitchcock’s Psycho is equally extraordinary – careening wildly from the shy romantic young man with a dream to the psychologically battered and drained vegetable in a straight-jacket.

Fear Strikes Out is also noteworthy as one of seven terrific pictures from one of the great producer-director relationships in American cinema. As a team, Producer Alan J. Pakula and director Robert Mulligan always dared to take us on journeys few mainstream pictures were willing to take in the late 1950s to early 1960s. They tackled a wide variety of important social issues with taste, intelligence and most importantly, a fabulous sense of showmanship. The pictures they made together were as supremely entertaining as they were thought-provoking. If the team had only made Fear Strikes Out and their timeless adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, that would surely have been enough to secure them a place in motion picture history, but they kept on delivering.

It’s also interesting to mention how this creative relationship really points to the importance of producers with vision. Once this team split up, Mulligan kept directing pictures, but they were all a pale imitation of his collaborations with Pakula. Pakula, on the other hand began directing his own pictures during Mulligan’s decline. Pakula kept delivering and continued the legacy of creating masterworks (Klute, The Parallax View and All The President’s Men to name just a few) while Mulligan barfed up such celluloid chunks as Summer of ‘42, The Other, Same Time Next Year and sadly, those pieces of crap were his “watchable” pictures – try sitting through Mulligan's coat-hanger abortion upon Jason Miller's The Nickel Ride sometime. Sadly, the Fear Strikes Out DVD has absolutely no extra features, but it’s a solid transfer of a gorgeous-looking black and white picture and happily enhanced anamorphically. It's a movie worth owning and within the context of this box set, it shares (thankfully on a separate disc) a slim-line case with Bang The Drum Slowly.

The latter title, directed by the painfully bland John Hancock, is rendered TV-movie-style (visually) and the muted drama pretty much makes mincemeat out of Mark Harris’s lovely novel and screenplay. A young Robert DeNiro as a doomed simpleton ball player works hard to charm and touch us whilst Michael Moriarty as the pal who takes pity on him is equally moving.

Both actors make the film worth seeing, but the picture moves lugubriously, looks ugly, has little feel for capturing the joy of the ball fields, dugouts and dressing rooms and is saddled with a grating musical score.

There are no extras with Bang The Drum Slowly, but none are really required. As a point of comparison though, this set might have benefitted from including the live television adaptation from the 50s wherein scriptwriter Arnold (Tucker: The Man and His Dream) Schulman and director Daniel (A Raisin in the Sun, Fort Apache – The Bronx) Petrie blended the techniques of radio drama with live theatre and cinema (along with those of live television itself), thus rendering a perfect example of cusp-period artistic expression during the dawn of television as a medium that was worth extending far longer than it lived. Their challenge was to translate a tale that spanned two baseball seasons, numerous locations (including dugout action) and a huge cast during one live hour of drama. Ultimately, it’s handled with the kind of originality and efficiency that Hancock's 70s film version can't even begin to hold a candle to.

The other piece of bad news in this box set is a double-trouble double-header. Two separate discs sharing another slim line case are a pair of what might be the worst baseball pictures ever made: Hardball, a bile-inducing story of loser Keanu Reeves finding his inner-self while coaching a ragtag group of deprived inner-city kids to little league victory and Talent for the Dame, a dull-as-dishwater picture directed by the once talented (Alambrista, Short Eyes) Robert M. Young, who turned-into-no-talent-sell-out-hack. Starring an earnest ('nuff said) Edward James Olmos (‘nuff said) as a baseball scout who turns a small town simpleton ('nuff said) into a major leaguer ('nuff said), it's virtually unwatchable. Lorraine Bracco ('nuff said) is in it too. Christ, she has an annoying voice. Watching her in this picture, I’m absolutely stumped how Scorsese turned her into the beyond-palatable Henry Hill moll in Goodfellas. Here, she sounds like a frog with a firecracker going off in its butt. Talent For The Game, as it should be, has no extra features, but Hardball is inexplicably jam-packed with extra features including a pretty useless commentary track with the purported writer-director and a mess of glorified EPK junk.

Getting its own slimline case, the single disc of writer-director David S. Ward’s Major League, dubbed the “Wild Thing Edition”, is loaded with a variety of extra features including an okay commentary with Ward. If you liked George Roy Hill’s Slap Shot (and I most certainly do), you’ll probably manage to enjoy this raucous baseball version sans Hill’s directorial panache and Nancy Dowd’s brilliant dialogue. That said, Major League made me laugh quite a bit when I first saw it and coming back to the picture was like putting on a comfy old pair of slippers, managing quite ably to deliver the well-worn goods.

Rounding out the set are four different titles with the Bad News Bears. Sharing one slim-line case are two separate discs of the original Michael Ritchie comedy classic and the recent Richard Linklater remake. Ritchie’s picture from Bill Lancaster’s terrific script holds up so marvelously that one wonders why the remake was necessary – especially since it really doesn’t try to move into new territory like some good remakes actually can. (I like citing the first three versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers as an example of how this can work beautifully.) Ritchie’s original, stars the inimitable hang-dog schlub Walter Matthau as the drunken foul-mouthed lout who manages to coach an equally foul-mouthed group of kids to ball-diamond glory with the help of a foul-mouthed tweener, pitcher Tatum O’Neal and foul-mouthed little criminal on a motorcycle, a very young Jackie Earle Haley. It’s a wonderful picture – both funny and moving. Linklater’s remake is not only necessary, but thanks to Lancaster’s script (which remains largely intact) and Billy Bob Thornton who is surprisingly good in Matthau’s role, it’s kind of watchable, but why bother when the original rocks big time and in its own way, hasn't really dated. Sadly, Ritchie’s classic has zero extras and Linklater’s ho-hum remake is jam-packed with extras.

The final offerings in this box are the 70s sequels to Ritchie’s original. On two separate discs in the same slim-line plastic case, you'll first find Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, a horrendously unfunny followup with few of the original cast on board and an utterly unappetizing William Devane making a poor replacement for Matthau. The other sequel, Bad News Bears Go To Japan, has a few laughs as the misfits find themselves in the land of the rising sun. Paramount wisely secured Bill Lancaster to write the script and they cast a very entertaining Tony Curtis in the coach role. Is it good? Not exactly, but it’s an okay time-waster and has a good number of ludicrous American-styled Japanophobic gags.

If you don’t own Fear Strikes Out, Major League and the original Bad News Bears and want to own all three of them, then it’s probably your best bet economically to pick up the box set. That said, I do hope Paramount Home Video gets its act together and issues some extras-loaded Blu-Rays of Fear Strikes Out and Ritchie’s Bad News Bears. That would be manna from Heaven.

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LOVE AND PAIN AND THE WHOLE DAMN THING - Maggie Smith, Alan Pakula and Alvin Sargent a Holy Trinity!

Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing (1973) ***1/2
Dir. Alan J. Pakula
Starring: Maggie Smith, Timothy Bottoms

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing is a terrific title and, because of its length, a challenge for most marquee displays, video box covers and TV listings. It’s also, save for those who saw the picture in 1973 and loved it, a relatively forgotten picture from one of the best American directors of the 70s. During the last 17 years of his life, however, one might have concluded, based on his delivering overwrought Holocaust-themed Oscar-bait like Sophie's Choice amidst a whack of John Grisham adaptations and the like, that Alan J. Pakula was little more than a hack.

In fact, the most interesting thing about Pakula during this period was how his life ended, a freak auto accident in which a steel pipe sailed through his vehicle's dashboard window, lodging itself deep into the filmmaker's skull.

However, if one could erase the abovementioned years of 1980 to 1997 and focus solely on his output during the 60s and 70s, one would be faced with the work of a good, if not great filmmaker. In the early 60s, Pakula established himself as one of the best creative producers in Hollywood. Allied as a producer with director Robert Mulligan, the pair generated seven fine feature films during the 60s. Of these seven pictures, two were bonafide masterpieces – the powerful film adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird and the brilliantly acted (Anthony Perkins and Karl Malden) biopic of baseball player Jimmy Piersall and his domineering father, Fear Strikes Out. This was surely one of the great producer-director relationships in American cinema. Pakula and Mulligan tackled a wide variety of important social issues with taste, intelligence and most, importantly, a fabulous sense of showmanship. The pictures they made together were as supremely entertaining as they were thought provoking.

Pakula’s talent as a filmmaker became even more apparent when the team split up. Mulligan’s work got worse - a pale shade of his past successes, while Pakula went on to direct some of the most important films of the 70s. Ironically, it’s Pakula’s last years as a director that resemble the mediocrity of Mulligan’s career WITHOUT Pakula as a producer. But from his directorial debut in 1969 with the quirky Liza Minnelli vehicle The Sterile Cuckoo and through to the elegiac post-war western Comes a Horseman and the tremendous romantic comedy Starting Over, Pakula delivered the goods - and then some.

Pakula is, perhaps, always going to be best known for his unofficial trilogy of 70s paranoia-infused thrillers Klute, The Parallax View and All the President’s Men – and rightly so, since all three pictures clearly display a strong voice, an impeccable command of film craft and solid delivery of some of the most intelligent thrills committed to film.

Nestled between the paranoid world of a call girl being stalked and a corporation devoted to political assassination is Pakula’s imperfect, but still lovely and mostly forgotten bittersweet romantic comedy Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing. Working from a terrific script by Alvin (Paper Moon, Ordinary People, Spiderman 2) Sargent, the picture tells the tale of a May-December romance between two lonely, seemingly mismatched people. Lila Fisher (Maggie Smith) is a forty-something spinster dying of an incurable disease who takes a trip to Spain to experience the beauty and adventure that has eluded her. Walter Elbertson (Timothy Bottoms) is a twenty-something slacker packed off by his over-achieving father to the same sunny Spanish climes for a bike tour. When Walter abandons the rigorous journey for the relative comfort of a bus tour, he finds himself sitting next to Lila in the only empty seat. At first, the unlikely pair keep their distance, but after a couple of meet-cute-ish moments – one involving Walter’s underwear, the other involving a locked outhouse door – the loners are drawn to each other: first as friends and eventually as lovers.

Sargent’s scenario is a largely familiar romance, but he peppers his tale with a series of genuinely funny set pieces and some terrific dialogue for the two attractive stars. Most importantly, he creates two lovely, diverse characters for two equally diverse actors.

Timothy Bottoms, no stranger to the May-December romance by virtue of his turn as Sonny Crawford in Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 classic The Last Picture Show where the sensitively studly Bottoms beds down the sex-and-love-starved housewife played by Cloris Leachman. Made the same year as Love and Pain…, the Bogdanovich picture went through the roof while Pakula's effort saw its release delayed until 1973. Bottoms is great in both. In Love and Pain…, he's initially and alternately aloof and whiny, but his performance is truly a marvel as he slowly becomes charming and likeable as his relationship with Lila deepens.

Maggie Smith is especially wonderful in her role. Often portrayed as pinched and matronly in films like The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and the seriously neglected The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, she is full of life, vim, vigour and romance in Love and Pain… and happily, Pakula lavishes the kind of pictorial attention to her that was so rare for Smith. She is a downright sexy in this movie – a mature, but enticing middle-aged babe. With her gorgeous red hair, long legs, delectably prim manner and beautiful smile flashing a nice set of pearly whites, Smith is – without question a MILF-extraordinaire! Most amazingly, the script allows her to engage in some really funny physical humour. Smith is not above taking more than one pratfall and a scene wherein she has an entire roll of toilet paper wrapped around her legs and unfurling an ever longer trail of bum-wipe as she scrambles towards her tour bus is the stuff of comic genius.

With a lush, romantic score from Michael Small, stunning location photography from Geoffrey (A Night To Remember, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Tess) Unsworth and a fine director at the peak of his powers, Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing is a truly sparkling and moving romance.

“Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing” is available on Sony’s “Martini Movies” DVD brand. How and what a “Martini Movie” is supposed to be is still beyond me. How this bittersweet romantic comedy can be considered a “Martini Movie” is especially beyond me.

THE OPTIMISTS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Deeply Moving Sellers in Deeply Flawed Movie

The Optimists (1973) **1/2
dir. Anthony Simmons
Starring: Peter Sellers, Donna Mullane, John Chaffey, David Daker, Marjorie Yates

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is the sort of neglected (though slightly tarnished) gem that, on the surface, appears to have had the recipe for success.

The ingredients are as follows:

Peter Sellers in a restrained, delicate performance plays a cranky, poor, old music hall singer living in a slum who lives alone with his memories and his sick old dog.

Two cute working class kids (Donna Mullane and John Chaffey) want to rescue a cute orphan puppy from the pound.

When the abovementioned first meet, the Old Man is surly towards the children. In spite of this, they find his eccentricities, old songs and dog most amusing. He secretly enjoys their company and eventually the three become friends. He even helps them get a puppy from the pound.

Add to this recipe songs and music by Lionel (Oliver!) Bart and George Martin (yes, THAT George Martin!).

Sounds like a winner, right?

Wrong. The picture was barely released, garnered less-than-stellar reviews (when anyone bothered to review it at all) and even now, has found its way into the home entertainment market with barely a peep.

While I’d like to report that it’s some kind of forgotten masterpiece. I cannot. I can, however, suggest that it’s worth a look for both Sellers and the kitchen sink glimpse into the landscape that was working class London in the late 60s and early 70s. If it wasn’t as depicted in this film, it sure feels like it anyways. Smoke belches steadily from factory chimneys, everything feels wet and mucky, there’s seldom a sunny day, the interiors feel worn and grimy and everyone, save for the kids, have the most dour expressions on their faces.

Aside from the wisps of plot described above (in addition to a thrown away sub-plot dealing with the children’s parents who neglect them only because they’re slaving to keep food on the table), this is pretty much what comprises the picture and alas, the running time is far too long to sustain an audience’s interest in such muted and dreary goings-on.

It might have been a different story with a Tony Richardson or Karel Reizs or John Schlesinger directing, but Anthony Simmons, directing from a screenplay adaptation by Tudor Gates of Simmons’s own novel “The Optimists of Nine Elms” is, as a director, barely competent. Scenes run on too long, the camera is often in the wrong place at the wrong time and many sequences feel truncated, not because of poor editing, but because the poor editor (a usually crackerjack cutter), John (Frenzy, A Fish Called Wanda) Jympson, clearly didn’t always have the proper coverage (footage, shots) to work with.

In spite of this, Sellers is quite remarkable. He puts his heart and soul into his performance and there are numerous moments where his command of the role and the screen itself are so powerful that it’s almost impossible to divert oneself from the picture when he’s on-screen. His eyes convey decades of hurt and lost dreams and the only time he explodes with joy is when he bursts into song. Sellers is heartbreaking in this picture. The performance itself is on a par with his work in Being There or his supporting bits in the Ealing comedies. Too bad the movie isn’t up to snuff.

All that said, though, any movie that climaxes in an abandoned pet cemetery with the weather beaten headstones of long-ago departed canines and Peter Sellers burying his old dog, whilst inheriting a new one, can’t really be all that bad, can it?

The Optimists is currently available on the Legend Films DVD label as part of the series of titles that Paramount Pictures did not feel like distributing themselves.

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THE NEW CENTURIONS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Richard Fleischer's screen adaptation of former LAPD cop Joseph Wambaugh's first bestselling novel delivers a dramatic, but realistic front-lines approach to a world that most of us couldn’t even begin to imagine.

The New Centurions (1972) dir. Richard Fleischer
Starring: George C. Scott, Stacy Keach, Jane Alexander, Clifton James, Scott Wilson, Erik Estrada, Rosalind Cash, Isabel Sanford, James Sikking and William Atherton

***

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It’s always a pleasure to extol the considerable virtues of Richard Fleischer, one of the most overlooked and underrated American directors, even when the picture in question is not one of his best works. The New Centurions is a movie that, at least for me, plops squarely into the category of work I loved as a kid that hasn't held up as well as I’d hoped. That said, it has much to recommend it – most notably, a great George C. Scott performance and a generally fine first two-thirds. If there are major problems with the film, they probably lie with Stirling Silliphant’s erratic screenplay adaptation of Joseph Wambaugh’s groundbreaking, best-selling novel.

Wambaugh is, of course, the former LAPD cop-turned-novelist whose books captured the day-to-day grind of police life sans shoot-em-up glorification – a dramatic, but realistic front-lines approach to a world that most of us couldn’t even begin to imagine. Fleischer’s movie version, from a directorial standpoint, often does an excellent job in this respect. Taking us from the graduation of rookie cop Roy Fehler (Stacy Keach) and his on-the-job training under the tutelage of grand, old man of the force; the wizened, cynical Andy Kilvinski (George C. Scott), a good part of this journey offers considerable entertainment value. With the dark grainy lighting and camerawork of Ralph Woolsey, Fleischer gets us through the nightly grind of patrol cops in an almost documentary-like flavour.

For the most part, this is no standard-issue genre fare as we follow the cops on a series of almost mundane adventures – domestic disputes, child abuse cases, petty theft, grifting and in one of the movie’s more amusing segments, the rounding up of streetwalkers, shoving them into the back of a paddy wagon and getting them boozed up so they can’t ply their trade. The film also focuses on the cops’ bouts with alcoholism and marital strife. All of this is peppered with George C. Scott's Kilvinski who regales his rookie charge with all manner of crusty wisdom and gallows humour.

For 1972, this was certainly groundbreaking material.

My first helping of the picture was at the tender age of 12 and I saw it with my ex-cop Dad. As a movie, it was definitely unlike the usual father-and-son fare in the de-glamorization of the cops’ lives and I also recall my own father responding very positively to the movie in that it had “less bullshit” than other cop pictures. Seen now, though, it’s a movie that scores points for being the first of its kind in the mainstream, but alas, loses considerable steam as Silliphant’s script maintains the episodic structure of Wambaugh’s book without finding a compelling enough backbone to hang it on cinematically. The script also adds, all on its lonesome, clunky and clichéd verbiage in strange contrast to the dialogue that crackles as well as plot elements that feel too stock.

This seems especially odd since Silliphant did such a fine job adapting the classic cop novel on which Norman Jewison’s In The Heat of the Night is based. With that film, Silliphant was able to deftly sift the best and most cinematic elements in the original source material by John Ball, while adding the proper connective tissue to make the picture a cohesive whole. The New Centurions by comparison is messy, lurching from one episode to another and never quite capturing the sense of time passing in a smooth manner.

There are other problems with the picture. When the character of Kilvinski tragically departs from the story, the rest of the movie can’t quite rise to Scott’s level of performance and his presence, or lack thereof in the latter third. Scott's rendering of this character is so powerful it almost seems like movie’s only raison d'être.

Alas, the marital difficulties portrayed border on soap opera. It's bad melodrama, pure and simple. It doesn’t help that actress Jane Alexander portrays Stacy Keach’s wife with such ramrod-like seriousness that she comes off like a harridan on lithium. Equally unexceptional is a subplot involving the gorgeous Rosalind Cash as Keach's fresh love interest. In theory, both of these SEEM necessary, but feel shoehorned in to the proceedings rather than flowing naturally from them.

Even more bothersome is the rather interesting cast of supporting characters who are introduced, then dropped, with no visible effort to fully integrate them into the whole. Part or this is definitely a script issue, but in fairness to Siliphant, this and some of the other structural failings could well be coming from studio-imposed cuts to bring the movie closer to traditional cops n' robbers fare. (There is even a well directed, but completely out of place car stunt that feels like it belongs to another movie.)

All this said, though, Fleischer keeps the action moving with his typical efficiency and he works overtime to deliver a sense of the streets and the day-to-day aspects of police work. Some of the banter of the cops themselves (both on patrol and in the station house is gorgeously rendered. There are individual scenes and sequences that soar in spite of the screenplay's flawed structure. Some are simply unforgettable.

Scott’s rendition of “Kilvinski’s Law”, the character’s off-the-book sage advice, is a marvel to behold. Nobody but Scott could do full justice to nuggets like: "Treat everybody the same - white, black, brown. Be civil to everybody, courteous to no one. We're supposed to use equal force. If a dude uses his fists, you use your stick. If he uses a knife, you use your gun - cancel his ticket right then and there. If everything else fails, hit him with a brick."

Other fine moments include a terrifying scene where the cops rescue a baby from being burned and beaten by its neglectful mother, an especially hilarious sequence involving the entrapment of a seven-foot lumberjack “fruit” seeking manly amore in a local park and George C. Scott’s final monologue which is not only heartbreakingly performed, but one of the few moments that achieves what the whole movie aspires to.

Besides, where else is one going to see Mrs. Jefferson herself (Isabel Sanford) playing a foul-mouthed, fat-assed, soul-infused street whore? That gal definitely was “a movin’ on up”.

Oh, and have I mentioned the movie has one major-league groovy Quincy Jones score?

“The New Centurions” is available on DVD from Sony Pictures in their Martini Movies series.

THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Director Peter Yates blends humanity with tough-as-nails brutality in this bonafide crime classic from the 70s

A CINEMATIC 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS, EASTERN-RITE NATIVITY AND FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY: Join me in this special celebration of cinema as each day I will be publishing a review in honour of this season of good will and focusing on films and filmmakers who have made a contribution to both the human spirit and the art of film.

For the TENTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS, Klymkiw Film Corner gives to you…

The Friends of Eddie Coyle

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) dir. Peter Yates
Starring: Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan, Alex Rocco.

*****

By Greg Klymkiw

The fate of Eddie Coyle, the title character of this grim Peter Yates-directed crime drama, is so clear right from the beginning, so infused with a profound and palpable inevitability, that one could wonder what the point is of seeing the film at all. The point, however, becomes quickly and abundantly clear.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a genuine masterpiece.

Right from Eddie Coyle’s first appearance – heavy-lidded, baggy-eyed, paunchy, world-weary and shuffling with the gait of a once-physically-powerful man now consigned to the throbbing aches of late middle age – we pretty much know he’s doomed. Late at night and under the cold glare of fluorescent lights in a cafeteria-styled diner, Eddie places a slice of rubbery pie and a cup of coffee onto his tray and joins the table of a greasy, long-haired, bug-eyed young thug.

Wolfing his pie down between slurps of watery coffee, Eddie’s manner is been-there-done-that as he negotiates with the thug to purchase an ordnance of powerful and highly illegal handguns. The thug’s clearly an upstart, oozing bravado – peppering it with promises he might clearly not be able to keep. Eddie sets him straight - almost like a schoolteacher lecturing his young charge. Holding his battered fist in front of the thug, Coyle explains how he has twice the number of knuckles most people have. Eddie's nickname is "Knuckles". His hand was crushed - punishment for lousing up a job based on a false promise.

But Eddie’s not bitter. It’s business, he explains. It’s "The Life" – a life he chose in the only world he ever felt comfortable in. But now, Eddie needs a big score and he needs favours. If he can’t get them, he’s headed straight for hard time. His wife will have to collect welfare and his kids will face the cruel taunts of their classmates for having a no-account Dad. It would seem Eddie needs a miracle. He needs more than that, though. What Eddie really needs are friends. Right now, he has none – at least none that he can count on.

Promises are cheap. So is life.

Robert Mitchum, one of the screen’s most legendary and charismatic actors, is Eddie Coyle. Playing everything from cops to cowboys to soldiers and everything in between (including his stunning turns as the evil Max Cady in Cape Fear and the malevolent psycho lay preacher in Night of the Hunter), Eddie Coyle is a role that not only fits Mitchum like a well-worn baseball glove but is, I truly believe, his best role and quite probably his greatest performance. Mitchum serves up a hardened criminal – albeit a marked, desperate one who knows what he needs to survive, even if it means succumbing to the lowest rung of his kind and turning stool pigeon to cops who seem, frankly, no better than the criminals they seek to incarcerate.

As a director, Peter Yates was certainly no stranger to the crime genre when he made The Friends of Eddie Coyle. He’d already directed the Donald Westlake heist picture The Hot Rock, the gritty British-produced Robbery (a realist, almost semi-documentary-styled dramatization of 1963’s notorious “great train robbery” starring Stanley Baker), numerous episodes of such classic TV crime series as Danger Man and (one of my personal favourites) The Saint. Last, but certainly not least, Yates helmed Bullitt, the slam-bang Steve McQueen detective thriller that set the bar for all cinematic car chases that would follow. There was always, however, another side to Yates who gave us the gentle comedy of Breaking Away and the tragic gay love story The Dresser. It is finally this combination of the macho stylist and the gentle humanist that made Yates a natural to direct The Friends of Eddie Coyle. These seemingly dichotomous qualities Yates possessed are probably what make the picture so great.

The other, of course, is Yates gift with getting the most out of locations. While Bullitt, showcased Steve McQueen’s baby blues, Jacqueline Bisset’s feminine perfection and a car chase that has seldom been matched, it most brilliantly and stunningly extolled the virtues of the city of San Francisco.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is set in Boston and the last time I checked, it was and is a city of great beauty. You’d never know it from Yates's grim eye. He goes well out of his way to show us a Boston that nobody, save perhaps Eddie Coyle and other underworld denizens would bother to live in. In seedy cafes, dank bars, endlessly indistinguishable parking lots, near-tenement slums, lifeless suburbs, cold, almost Kafkaesque inner city cement financial districts and other equally unflattering locales, Yates and gritty, versatile cinematographer Victor (Dog Day Afternoon, The Gambler) Kemper train their lens on the non-descript and do so with harsh light, available light or no light at all. And lots of grain. Glorious chunks of swirling, dancing grain.

Paul Monash’s excellent script beautifully distills George V. Higgins novel of the same name. Higgins, a former prosecuting attorney turned crime writer always displayed a knack for dialogue that crackled with life and constructed narratives that defied typical crime story structures.

One of the odd things about Monash's script and Yates's adherence to it is the strange focus upon the nasty, brutal crimes committed as a result of Coyle’s efforts. Coyle is peripherally involved as a supplier to the criminals, but Yates and Monash lavish considerable attention and detail upon the various bank robberies that take place – none of which ever directly involve the title character. Not only is this an opportunity for Yates to dazzle us with his virtuosity as a filmmaker, but narratively and cinematically, it drives the nails of truth into us - that Eddie's dealings have serious consequences. His crimes are very real and not at all without victims.

And though our “hero” never gets so much as a moment to brandish a weapon, (which is, in and of itself highly unconventional for any crime picture), we are flung back to the reality and inevitability of Coyle’s eventual demise. Yates never lets us forget just how doomed poor Eddie is. Nowhere is this more haunting and downright moving than the heart-achingly tragic sequence where Coyle’s “friend”, the two-timing killer Dillon (Peter Boyle) takes him to a Boston Bruins hockey game, plies him with endless pints of beer and engages in pleasantries, all the while knowing that at the end of the evening, he has been entrusted with the mission to blow Eddie Coyle’s brains out.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw The Friends of Eddie Coyle as a kid with my ex-cop Dad. It was a movie that stayed with me and haunted me for the thirty or so years since first seeing it.

What I don’t think I’ll ever forget was my Dad’s response at the end of the movie. “That’s the way it is, kid, that’s just the way it is,” he said to me, with more than a little sadness in his voice, and with many long years under his belt dealing with guys just like Eddie Coyle.

Seeing the movie now, those words still hold true. Only now, I’m able to see Eddie himself, lumbering through the inevitability of his doom – those same words emblazoned, no doubt, on his brain.

That’s just the way it is.

"The Friends of Eddie Coyle" is available on a terrific Criterion Collection DVD.