Small-time Boston hood Eddie Coyle is looking to buy some guns. He's also looking for a way out of some serious jail time coming his way on account of being caught driving a truck full of two hundred casas of Canadian Club that didn't belong to him up in New Hampshire. Eddie's strictly in the market for handguns, the kind of pieces you could use for, say, robbing a bank. But he knows the kid he's buying from has also got some more serious hardware -brand new M16s- and a customer eager to get his hands on them. If Eddie was to give the cops a name, then maybe the DA would go easy on him when his case comes up for disposition. But caught between the cops and the mob, Eddie is playing a high-stakes game-and if he picks the wrong person to sell out, jail will be the least of his problems.