THE TOWN is a real well done, more-realistic-than-most crime drama. Not exactly a heist movie, because although it’s leading up to an elaborate caper it’s not as much about the planning and executing of the thing as it is about the people who do it. It’s also one of these movies people from Boston make where they’re real anxious to show off every last detail about the Boston neighborhoods and culture. I haven’t been there much so I got no clue how accurate it is, but it seems believable enough. There’s a part where they have coffee at Dunk’n Donuts, that part was real I know. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘Boston’
The Town
Monday, September 27th, 2010
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
Thursday, November 1st, 2007So there I was minding my own business, listening to an interview with Elmore Leonard. Suddenly out of the blue Elmore mentions this book I didn’t know about, The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins. He says it was a revelation to him, showed him that you could use profanity in a book and that you didn’t have to tell a straight forward story. And he calls it the best crime novel ever written.
So, through the miracle of opening another window, I ordered a used copy of the book before the interview was even over. Much later it arrived, then I read it, then I loaned it to somebody and his car was stolen with it inside and later they found his car and the car thieves didn’t take the book with them. Their loss, my gain, because Elmore Leonard was right, it’s a hell of a book. Pretty much the first half of the book is all conversations, almost no description. Later some robberies start happening and it turns more into a traditional book. But it doesn’t have your normal type of a story here. It’s more a portrait of these characters and it kind of shows the complexity of a network of criminals, snitches and cops. And it has a great ear for the dialogue. Higgins I guess was a lawyer before he became a writer, maybe he was around some of these guys.
It didn’t occur to me to check for a movie of the book, but conferring with a fellow book reader type individual I learned about it. Paramount never released it on video [UPDATE: it has since been released by Criterion here is a shameless Amazon link], but you know what? The streets will find a way. The streets will find a way. (The streets in this case are a metaphor for the internet. They got downloading now, and I don’t know how to do it but young people do and sometimes they will burn it for you.) In the movie version Eddie Coyle is played by Robert Mitchum. The director is Peter Yates, director of BULLITT, THE HOT ROCK and MOTHER, JUGGS AND SPEED. Also he did KRULL but that doesn’t count. The score is funky fusiony shit by Dave Grusin, sounds kind of like the score for OUT OF SIGHT. (more…)
The Departed
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007If you saw INFERNAL AFFAIRS you know the storyline. Undercover cop vs. undercover gangster. There’s alot of stories about cops going undercover in gangs, but this one also has a member of the crime family who entered the police academy and moved up the ranks as a mole for his gang. So now both traitors are well situated and it starts to get obvious to both sides that they have a mole in their midst. And the moles are given the job of finding out who the mole is. It could be called LOS TOPOS.
Mr. Scorsese took that premise and moved it to Boston and told his own story about contemporary Boston criminals. Scorsese’s young associate Leonardo Del Caprio (looking more like Benicio Del Toro every year) plays the cop who pretends to get kicked out of the force, does some time and then joins Jack Nicholson’s gang. Matt Damon plays the cop who’s really working for the gang. We first see him as a little kid getting money from Nicholson in a diner. And the kid they chose is a dead ringer. They even taught him how to cock his eyebrow like Damon. Somebody’s gonna have to find a young Ben Affleck doppelganger and these two can go on the road. Or they could do THE YOUNG JASON BOURNE MYSTERIES where the camera shakes around while he’s fighting some kid in a treehouse.
People are calling this a return to form for Scorsese, but it’s more like a return to genre. Come on man, THE AVIATOR wasn’t good enough for you? Of course it’s great to see Scorsese back doing a current day gang movie. And this is a great movie. But don’t get TOO excited, it’s not GOODFELLAS. There’s alot of funny macho dialogue that makes it alot of fun, but it’s more stylized I think. GOODFELLAS seems more authentic. THE DEPARTED is more just for laughs. This probaly isn’t a masterpiece. But it’s a really fuckin great thriller. (more…)
