Fat City

Rating:
Summary: Boring...
Review: I know that this film is supposed to be a masterpiece, but I fail to see how anyone can interpret this film that way. I was surprised to see Jeff Bridges is such a boring film. I found that this film wandered too much in the beginning. I watched the first hour and noted that there was hardly any character or plot development! I found that the movie never really amounted to anything. I believe that this movie is not even worth renting! If someone can explain to me how they could interpret this movie as an excellent one, please feel free to e-mail me with an explaination, otherwise, my feelings towards this movie will stay the same. Addy : [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Boring...
Review: I know that this film is supposed to be a masterpiece, but I fail to see how anyone can interpret this film that way. I was surprised to see Jeff Bridges is such a boring film. I found that this film wandered too much in the beginning. I watched the first hour and noted that there was hardly any character or plot development! I found that the movie never really amounted to anything. I believe that this movie is not even worth renting! If someone can explain to me how they could interpret this movie as an excellent one, please feel free to e-mail me with an explaination, otherwise, my feelings towards this movie will stay the same. Addy : [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Slice of Life
Review: In director John Huston's typically unsentimental style, "Fat City" is an interesting picture of fringe dwellers from Northern California. Amateur boxing is the film's selling point but Huston is more concerned with the inner-workings of these characters. Boxing is just the means to which these down-and-outers achieve some kind of glory in an existence that offers mostly rotten fruit. An excellent cast is assembled here with Stacy Keach as a hard-luck fighter who recently is more comfortable on a bar stool than in the ring, Jeff Bridges as an up-and-coming young fighter with impending fatherhood, Susan Tyrrell as Keach's drinking buddy girlfriend, and Nicholas Colasanto as a colorful boxing promoter. Gorgeous cinematography delivered by Conrad Hall.

Rating:
Summary: Gritty, grimy boxing drama
Review: John Huston's low budget flick "Fat City" is a depressing, gutter level view of the world of boxing.

A has been contender, Billy Tully, played solidly by Stacy Keach is now living in a boozy world where he supports himself by working as a migrant farm worker in Stockton, California. He rousts himself from his hellhole hotel room to work out in the local Y. There he encounters a youthful Jeff Bridges, a lean and lithe amateur. After a short sparring session Keach recognizing Bridges' potential, steers him to his old trainer played by Nick Colasanto (Coach of Cheers TV fame).

Colasanto tries to mold him into a professional leading him through small time bouts in small time towns. Bridges has a yearning to succeed with a new wife to support and baby on the way. Meanwhile Keach hooks up with an alcoholic barfly played excellently by Susan Tyrell and plunges deeper in the morass of Palookaville. A brief comeback which nets him $100 and a busted open eyebrow for his trouble signals the futility of his situation.

The contrast between the enthusiastic, up and coming Bridges and the punch drunk Keach is poignantly portrayed. While Huston's representation seemed realistic and the acting was good, the movie was both plodding and dull. It never really made me care about the pathetic characters it depicted.

Rating:
Summary: Almost the best movie about boxing!
Review: Not the most upbeat film, but absolutely remarkable. A gem from John Huston's later years. The whole cast does a spectacular job here-Stacy Keach, Susan Tyrell, Jeff Bridges and Candy Clark. The feeling this film leaves you with is a rare one and I just love it. An underapprecited masterpiece from a old master.

Rating:
Summary: Almost the best movie about boxing!
Review: Not the most upbeat film, but absolutely remarkable. A gem from John Huston's later years. The whole cast does a spectacular job here-Stacy Keach, Susan Tyrell, Jeff Bridges and Candy Clark. The feeling this film leaves you with is a rare one and I just love it. An underapprecited masterpiece from a old master.

Rating:
Summary: Brutal Reality Brilliantly Portrayed
Review: Stacey Keach and Susan Tyrrell deliver Oscar caliber performance while Jeff Bridges launches a brilliant career in this 1972 epic, one of the best directorial efforts of the storied career of John Huston. Keach and Bridges play fighters trying to make a go of life in the tough world of professional boxing in Stockton, a delta city in Northern California.

Keach, living in a fleabag hotel, meets young Bridges at the local YMCA, where the former professional boxer has gone to work out. After enticing Bridges to spar a little, Keach is astonished when the younger man with the fast moves reveals he has never boxed, either amateur or professional. Keach suggests that Bridges look up his former manager, played by Nick Colasanto, at the Lido Gym.

Colasanto and his trainer, played by former ranked lightweight and welterweight, Art Aragon, waste no time in turning Bridges amateur. After Bridges' first workout Colasanto tells his wife that a good looking, clean cut "white kid" like Bridges should make a good crowd draw.

Keach falls on hard times, getting fired from his fry cook's job, going out early in the morning to work as a picker at nearby farms. He also forms a romantic relationship with hard luck Tyrrell, a heavy drinker, whose live in love, played by former world welterweight champion Curtis Cokes, has gone to jail on an assault charge. The fight was brought on by resentment of his interracial romance with Tyrrell. Meanwhile Keach moves in with Tyrrell.

When Keach, spurred on by Bridges' ring progress, decides to make a comeback, in his sober state he can no longer abide Tyrrell and moves out. When Cokes finishes serving his time he moves back in with her again.

Bridges has his own romantic involvement with Candy Clark. They make love in his car. She tells him she is pregnant and they get married.

Keach gets in shape and wins the first bought of his comeback against a Mexican fighter, played by noted light heavyweight boxer Sixto Rodriguez. What Keach does not know was that his opponent had passed blood in his hotel room and could not hold up to body blows, having been injured in a previous bout. All the same, he needs the money, and so he fights Keach anyway.

When all is said and done Keach, after Colasanto has taken out deductions for expenses such as room and board for his fighter, receives one hundred dollars. Keach becomes incensed, telling Colasanto once more about the time he let him down and, to save two hundred dollars, let him travel to Panama by himself for his most important fight against a local favorite, then ranked fifth in the world. With Keach ahead his cornermen, in an effort to win the bout for the Panamanian, administered cuts over both eyes with razor blades. This resulted in the referee stopping the bout. After that Keach's wife left him and his life spiraled rapidly downhill.

With resentment for Colasanto revived, a sulking Keach hits the skids once more, returning to heavy drinking. At the film's end he sees Bridges after the latter has sought to avoid him. Bridges tells him about his second child, and that he is still fighting professionally. As they sit in the coffee shop Keach gropes for meaning in life, wondering just where he is gone, fearful of how he will turn out.

Leonard Gardner adapted the screenplay from his own novel. Each had the same hard edge as the world he describes. He should know since it was his world. Gardner grew up in Stockton, boxed as an amateur, and wrote the novel while on the bum in Mexico.

Rating:
Summary: Boxing without Don King.
Review: This is a great grim movie. Huston did a heckuva job adapting Gardner's novel, but he started with grim material and went deeper into it. One memorable scene is when Keech manages to shake off his wine hangover and walks outside his transient hotel to try and make a new start on his life. He boldy heads out on the sidewalk, does a bit of bobbing and weaving on the curb. He's ready to turn over that new leaf but looks around at the city, and you can watch the wheels turn in his head as the he decides to go back inside. Punchdrunk. Rummy. It didn't take long to whip him this round, and all his rounds are pretty much like this. But he doesn't quit, the fight is still in him. The rage is there, but the skill and conditioning is long gone, so are his chances. They can beat him, they could kill him but they don't bother. The thing is, you can knock him down but he won't stay down, and sometimes that's all it takes. Between the white port in the alley, working the onion fields and listening to the old boxers talking about their lives, you wonder just what he's really teaching his new protege', and why either one even bothers. It's called life. It's not much but it's all we get, so take a tip from an old pro and don't stay on the canvas. Susan Tyrell does a great job, deserved her Oscar nomination, but reminded me of too many former flames perched on that barstool. Hmmm. Perhaps I'm trapped in the same...whack! Ooof,I didn't see that one coming. Life keeps hitting me with so many lefts, I'm begging for a right. If you're able to extract inspiration from a movie filled with scenes from a very tough life, watch Fat City. If you're looking for something fluffy, ain't nothin' here but a scram. Take it on the arches, pal.

Rating:
Summary: Susan Tyrell Deserved Nomination
Review: This is one of the better boxing movies. Stacy Keach can be an annoying actor, but he's right in this part. An aging fighter with a booze habit sloshes through Barrio LA and tries to make a comeback. Along the way he meets a young fighter, Jeff Bridges, with a pregnant girlfriend. I wouldn't say as other critics, that Bridges is being mentored by Keach. Keach is too booze soggy to help anybody, but he does introduce the kid to his old manager, Nicholas Colasanto, a gentle, but savvy ex-pug with a Latino wife. Colasanto is the emblematic manager with a heart of gold in a brutal sport.

Susan Tyrell got an Academy Award nomination for her part as the flotsam barfly. I can't place her accent. I wonder if juiced up Californians sound like her. Anyhow, she out acts everyone and I am disappointed I can find few credits for her in NetFlix. What a shame!

Fat City is slow moving with seemingly improvised acting. There's a real gritty reality to this 1971 LA world I knew nothing about. Still, it hangs together all right and I do recommend.