The Friends of Eddie Coyle / Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE, 1973, Paramount, 102 min. Dir. Peter Yates. Robert Mitchum is streetwise Eddie Coyle, a blue-collar fence squeezed between the Feds and his hoodlum cohorts, all the while trying to support his family. Cynical cop Richard Jordan, hep gun dealer Steven Keats, bank robber Alex Rocco and sociopathic bartender Peter Boyle all use Eddie for their own ends. And Eddie plays all ends against the middle, trying to survive and pick up a little change on the side.

BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA, 1974, MGM Repertory, 112 min. Dir. Sam Peckinpah. A land baron (Emilio Fernandez) offers a bounty to find Alfredo Garcia, the father of his daughter’s unborn child. Piano-playing, expatriate loser Bennie (Warren Oates) shambles through the backwater villages of rural Mexico on the hunt for easy money, a deadly pilgrimage that could jeopardize Bennie’s one real chance at happiness – the love of his loyal, prostitute girlfriend Elita (Isela Vega).