Hoffa: un pulso al poder

I have no interest in the life of Jimmy Hoffa, and I am predisposed to disliking the man even before the first frame of Hoffa is run. But I do watch, knowing the film is from a very good David Mamet script, knowing that I want to be convinced that Jack Nicholson is one of our great actors, and knowing that Danny DeVito is a very serious filmmaker--that I will see his heart and soul in the film.

I am not disappointed, and I still care, not at all about James Hoffa, the man.

Jack Nicholson is one of our great actors, and regardless of all his extra curricular activities, he is a committed and serious craftsman, and his portrayal of James Hoffa is fine craftsmanship.

The story of Hoffa itself may be the least interesting component of the film. The production design is beautiful-a perfect compliment to the words of Mamet delivered by a painstakingly perfect cast.

Should you have the opportunity to view the deluxe laserdisk with the Danny Devito commentary and extra production materials you will be treated.

Not a film for everyone, but I liked it.

James Riddle Hoffa was probably one of the most enigmatic union leaders in this history of our country. As an important labor organizer during the over the road trucker strikes in the 1930s, he accomplished many things that made possible the emergence of the Teamsters Union as a major political force for several decades afterward. At the same time, he fell into a trap that bedevils many a fighter who perceives her/himself as a "people's champion"- he convinced himself that he had to fight fire with fire, and in the end, it devoured him. Secondly, Hoffa did not have the money, the support or the political sophistication of a Robert Kennedy. This'll finish you in the United States. Despite all our bombast about law and order, the country loves its shady political characters charming and slick, or the medicine show man, witness: Clinton, Reagan, Bush. The awkward and openly coarse need not apply, witness Nixon, Hoffa, Lott. David Mamet understands that, and that's why his version of Hoffa's life works.

Mamet's Hoffa knows the Kennedy family built their fortune out of rum running to a large extent, and he sees no difference between their corruption and his own compromises. At least, Hoffa tells himself, his own deals with the devil serve something larger then his immediate family, they serve the membership of the union. And this was very true, which is why a fair number of Teamsters still swear by the name Jimmy Hoffa. Nicholson's snide asides to his "betters" completely captures the class war basis that motivated the actual man's actions. Anyone who has been through an actual labor dispute and has been witness to the patronizing communications that come through a company eager to crush a union effort knows full well what fired up Jimmy Hoffa, even as we turn aside from the path he took.

The film succeeds because De Vito, Nicholson and Mamet understand what pushed the labor movement forward, and they understand its contradictions. Most important, they understand why those contradictions overwhelmed a man as gifted as Jimmy Hoffa, and this is what makes it better then your average Hollywood drama about labor. Hoffa is a film about working class attitude that gets beneath the usual dismissals of working class concerns, and as such, deserves respect. The powers that be have every legend about their leadership. It's time the working class was allowed legends about its own once again, provided we understand that they are legends, and therefore laden with much myth. The very real larger then life qualities of Jimmy Hoffa, however, make this a film worth more then one critical glance.

While it is one of Nicholson's most challenging roles, as a viewer you find yourself more attached to director and co-star DeVito, who practically sunk every penny he owned into the making of this film. While the film did garner some Golden Globe nominations, altogether the film was a commercial and personal flop for all involved. The problem may have been that the world was not ready for this story. Nicholson is quite good as Hoffa, but one almost ignores the performance when you think of the personal attachment director DeVito had to the project. It is quite unfortunate because DeVito is interesting in a rare dramatic role. David Mamet did write a fine script and there is fine support from J.T.Walsh, Robert Prosky and Armand Assante.

In ten years, this film will be a classic!

All too often Jack Nicholson just coasts and plays his stock character. Sometimes it's boring, occasionally it's insulting, but in "Hoffa" Nicholson puts aside the sneer and the leer and delivers a knockout performance. Although he doesn't really look that much like the Teamster boss, Nicholson captures the man's aura perfectly. It's more than just nailing the vocal rhythms and inflections or mastering Hoffa's body language, you feel Nicholson is conveying the inner man as well. This is truly a multi-dimensional interpretation and it's absolutely stunning.

Unfortunately, the film is an inadequate showcase for Nicholson's talents. The story begins in 1975 on what presumably was the last day of Hoffa's life as he and his pal Bobby Ciaro (Danny DeVito) wait for some people to show up for a meeting at a Michigan roadhouse. They wait a long time which allows Bobby to recall many incidents in Hoffa's extraordinary career as a union organizer.

There are two problems with this. First Bobby, who's supposed to be something of an enforcer, is never credible. Although he's nearly always in view, he never seems to belong. Perhaps that's because he's entirely a creation of screenwriter David Mamet. Barely adequate as a story-telling device, Bobby's unfortunate insertion gives rise to the inevitable, more serious question: how much of this story is true?

If you accept Mamet's interpretation, Hoffa was a victim of a trusted associate, the Government, and the Mob, but foremost a hero because he fought for the working man. Fair enough. But when you watch "Hoffa" you don't really get a clear sense of why all this was so. Motivations are largely absent. The flashbacks pass by but you feel these are merely sketches or outlines, often presented without clear context. Some are believable, others seem to be mere speculation, still others, such as the scenes with Robert Prosky or the enormous riot sequence, implausible. Was Prosky's character real? Did so many people actually die? Ask Bobby, because in many ways it's as much his story as Hoffa's; but as we know, Bobby is pure fiction.

Mamet has been quoted as saying audiences look more for drama than for information. Fine, and who'd want to see Ken Burns' take on the Teamsters. But "Hoffa", for all its huffing and puffing, lacks the drama of Paul Schrader's "Blue Collar" or the better Mob pictures.

Recommended solely for Nicholson's performance.

Written with callous virtuosity by Mamet, directed with garishly vintage technique by DeVito, this hugely underrated, passionate, powerful film not only portrays Hoffa with the enhanced corporal magnitude of Nicholson, who gives a massive thrust of a performance, but it also reshuffles the ladder of American heroes as it's recognized nowadays. Several may be uneasily startled: This stylistic take on the life and mysterious disappearance of the Teamsters Union leader views Robert Kennedy as seen by Hoffa: a bellyaching Harvard-educated well-to-do, frantic for exposure, prepared to use evenhanded ways and biased to catch Hoffa, no equal at all for Hoffa in their incensed altercations.

In the context of most commercial movies, which insist on explaining too much or repeating the obvious, Hoffa remains a reasonably detached consideration of the career of a man whose ties to the Mafia not only cost the rank-and-file teamsters millions but also set a pattern for corruption that tainted the entire labor movement. It's a quintessentially American story, for only here did Big Labor become a big business to rival Big Business.

DeVito and the Great Character Development Skeptic neither romanticizie him or try to explore Hoffa outside his own mechanical justification that you have to do it to others before they do it you. Without commentary, in very broad strokes, they authenticate Hoffa's advancement from minor reformer to big-time shark, power-dealer and mob friend.

The movie opens as the edgy, dog-tired Jimmy, convoyed by his committed odd-job guy, conjured character Bobby, waits in a Cadillac in a Detroit cafeteria lot for a rendezvous with an abiding Mafia accomplice. The reminiscences that are the bulk of the film aren't Jimmy's, but the indulgent, diligent Bobby's. He worries about Jimmy's state of affairs, remembering their first meeting in the Depressed 1930s when, one night on the road, Jimmy invited himself into his truck and tried to enlist him for the teamsters. Jimmy was then something of an optimist. As the hours drone on in the lot, Bobby sequentially recalls his way through Jimmy's career.

While Bobby's remembrance is tender, this captivating, hazy biopic sees all coolly. This gives this forgotten '90s drama an indignantly cynical tone that is generally uncommon in American movies. It compels us to decide for ourselves, something that can be infinitely puzzling as well as gratifying. The film proposes there are occasions when one must reason for oneself. It doesn't pose as a docudrama or anything close. It's a skillful work of fiction, rooted in fact, devised with ingenuity and a dependable viewpoint.

DeVito's direction is crammed with overstated kinesics that appear wholeheartedly consistent with Bobby's exceedingly highlighted reminiscences of life with Jimmy. There are numerous striking overhead shots, whether it's a scene of Jimmy incarcerated or a panoramic view of union men wrestling scabs. Simultaneously, DeVito knows when to use close-ups, that is, to divulge character instead of to intersperse dialogue. When the director shows a recalled explosion and fire, they have the massive scope of something recounted in an anecdote told late at night in a favorite dive.

It comes as a surprise, about midway through, to learn that the Teamsters head has a wife and daughter. They appear during a crowd scene. But this film about Jimmy Hoffa has no time to show him meeting his wife, dating her, marrying her, finding their dream house, having a kid. That's about as it should be.

Does the movie grant that Jimmy was an instrument of organized crime? Not by any means. Nor does it quite maintain that Hoffa would take any advantage he could get, anywhere he could, to systematize the drivers and press-gang the bosses. He was a union realist, but what makes this movie so beguiling is that we can never entirely peep the romanticism that should be in there somewhere, no glow of internal principle. Something murky must be driving him on a lonesome, ruthless revenge.

Nicholson is an actor who can echo virtually anything in his face. His intense, volcanic performance is so good as Hoffa because he betrays virtually nothing. When we first see him, the corporal embellishments are striking. He's filled with spite, not optimism. He organizes for the same reason other guys get in bar fights, because it discharges the intense stresses within.

The production is plentiful with period particulars, consecutively in an enduring procession. The truckers' world distinguishes with the world of control occupied by the insiders: The Old World sophistication of the Mafia sociables, for instance, or the rooms where dominant government men dwell. The movie makes its implicit case for union organizing simply by complementing the cabs and roadstops of the drivers with the world of opportunity.

This is an inspired and vibrant piece, but is that sufficient? It sharply divided critics, but for me it is. Others will have valid protests to the ways the film works. This genuinely absorbing piece reveals DeVito as a sincere filmmaker. He extracts the core guise and pitch for this material. Not every director would've been self-assured enough to purely show us Jimmy Hoffa rather than narrating all about him. This is a movie that finds its impact between the lines, in what is unstated.