“The Friends of Eddie Coyle” is far superior to “Good Will Hunting.” It may be because I like crime dramas, or because it captures the grimy city I grew up in in the 70's, but I think it mostly because it is a well made, subtle film.

I agree re. Gus Van Sant. He is great. Liked “Milk,” loved “Elephant.” But to me “Good Will Hunting” just does not make it. I loved it when it came out, and it certainly has a few great moments. As the big-league debut of Damon and Affleck it is still interesting. But a great movie? I don't know. A matter of opinion, I guess.

I agree, too, that most movies could be relocated without sacrificing much. Most but not all. I'm talking about the special ones that are rooted in a particular place. They do exist.

“The Verdict” — great movie, for sure, and Newman's performance is fantastic. Is the Boston setting essential to the story? Yeah, maybe. I can see your point.

A good movie debate! I love it.

Gus Van Sant (one man's opinion) is one of the best directors working today. The script (with great uncredited polish by William Goldman) is lean and human.

Most movies could take place anywhere else. That's certainly true of Eddie Coyle. Would it have been a different movie if it was in Cleveland? Chicago? I don't think so. Deer Hunter doesn't live or die on its milieu. Change PA steel workers to Detroit auto workers or Bangor paper-mill workers. It would still be a film about the brutal struggles of the working class, of a belief system that sent them off quite willingly to Vietnam.

The Godfather comes to mind as a rare exception. It's a New York movie.

The Verdict, to my mind, is a film, like Good Will Hunting, that captures not merely the physical city –the once hard, dead-end streets of Southie — but the essence of what Irish Boston once was. Newman's character, at the film's opening, drinking before work, playing pinball. His self-loathing and aspirations to be a real lawyer, not merely the ambulance chaser that he is at the start.

Course, the irony is that one of the most pivotal scenes was shoot on Willow Street in Brooklyn Heights, because it looks like Boston and Sidney Lumet preferred shooting in his home town.