Boston blackguards

Confusable with Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead in multiple ways, What Doesn’t Kill You (2008, MC-71.) also stands in the shadow of The Departed, Mystic River, and Gone Baby Gone, so it’s no surprise it came and went without notice, despite worthy performances by Mark Ruffalo and Ethan Hawke, and an authentic directorial perspective on South Boston from Brian Goodman, telling more or less his own story. Ruffalo plays him, and he himself plays the gang leader under whose sway the two longtime friends chafe, each going astray in his own way, with one headed for redemption and one for oblivion. It’s all done well enough (including Amanda Peet as the wife), but not well enough to stand out in a crowded field.

I also caught the recent Criterion release of the granddad of all these films, The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), directed by Peter Yates from the George V. Higgins novel. Not exactly Bullitt goes to Boston, this film suffers from too many “friends” and not enough Eddie, in the person (and presence) of Robert Mitchum. He’s a small-time hood and Quincy family man in a bind, running guns and facing time, negotiating with other crooks and the cops, caught in a web he doesn’t begin to discern. At times this film plays like an instructional documentary for a bank heist, and at others like a primer on deviousness, as the bad and not-so-good guys make their deals in the shady bars of Boston, and on the plaza of the then-new City Hall. As gritty and downbeat as it gets, as meticulous and observant as it is, this film lacks a beating heart, ending with only a flashing neon sign in an almost empty bowling alley parking lot.