Yates’s smart, low-key crime drama was shot entirely on location in the cold, grim environs of Boston, giving it a rough, lived-in feel that imbues the most mundane of activities with a sense of unadorned realism. Robert Mitchum’s memorable turn as an aging “two-bit hood” trying to save himself from prison reignited his career in the ’70s and exposed new dimensions for him as an actor. This is the kind of intelligent, literary film that doesn’t get made too often anymore (only in the 1970s could a sleeper like this with a mostly unknown cast come out of a major studio’s gates). (DVD)