Long available only on cruddy bootleg discs, "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" is one of the best crime films of the 70s, a decade that wasn't exactly stingy with great crime films. Now digitally remastered by Criterion, this is a movie worth seeing out for your Netflix queue, stat.

Robert Mitchum stars as a blue-collar Boston hood who's facing time in a New Hampshire prison for a job that went wrong. And looking at the guy's face, you get the sense that this isn't the first time the world has dealt him a bum hand. He's been in and out of the joint his whole life and he doesn't think he hasn't it in him to do another stretch. So he decides to snitch on his friends to get the case thrown out. Mitchum, a great star of film noirs of the 40s and 50s has the world-weary look of a born loser. His eyes are at half-mast like he's seen it all before. He looks like a doomed slab of granite. He also gives a dynamite performance. And it's not just him.

Based on a novel by George V. Higgins, "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" is populated by faces that will be familiar to fans of 70s cinema, a decade when every other movie wasn't a sequel or about superheroes. There's Peter Boyle as bartender who also rats out to the cops. Alex Rocco as a low-level bank robber. Steven Keats as a jittery, fast-talker who sells stolen guns. And Richard Jordan as an undercover cop who strings the hoods along with promises he'll never be able to deliver on.

Directed by Peter Yates, the guy behind Steve McQueens "Bullitt", Eddie Coyle's tough-guy dialogue and working-class Beantown locations are so realistic, it almost feels like you're watching a documentary. A great, great documentary.

Now for a look at what else is new on DVD: in "Killshot", Mickey Rourke stars in an Elmore Leonard adaptation; in "Powder Blue", Jessica Biel goes straight to DVD as a stripper; and in Saturday Morning Cartoons of the 70s, "Scooby Doo", "The Jetsons", and "Hong Kong Phooey" get a boxed set.