Product Description
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Sylvester Stallone stars in this hard-hitting, boldly ambitious
drama that powerfully reveals a significant slice of American
history. As union leader Johnny Kovak, Stallone's performance
confirmed his stature as one of Hollywood's hottest stars.
Closely paralleling history, the film follows the rise and fall
of Kovak, from his beginnings as an idealistic blue-collar worker
to his final position as head of one of the country's most
powerful unions: the Federation of Inter-State Truckers. But
there are no unred heroes in this world. To achieve his dream
of justice for the working man, Kovak must accept the muscle of
organized crime. Ultimately, F.I.S.T. is a story of idealism
corrupted and betrayed. O® winner Rod Steiger (1967 Best
Actor, In the Heat of the Night), Peter Boyle and Brian Dennehy
are featured in the fine supporting cast. Directed by Norman
Jewison, with Laszlo Kovac's darkly moody cinematography and a
heroic score by Rocky composer Bill Conti, F.I.S.T. is "a
particularly American kind of epic" (Vincent Canby, The New York
Times).
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Considering that Sylvester Stallone's first film of any real
distinction was Rocky, an Academy Award winner for best picture
and an instant classic, it's a safe bet that he had free rein
when it came to his next project. In F.I.S.T. (released in 1978),
he chose a vehicle that matched him with a big-time director
(Norman Jewison of In the Heat of the Night and The Thomas Crown
Affair renown), a screenwriter on the verge of stardom (Joe
Eszterhas, whose future would include Flashdance and Basic
Instinct), and veteran actors like Rod Steiger, Peter Boyle, and
Tony Lo Bianco. Yet while F.I.S.T. is filmmaking on a grand
scale, it also has the underlying themes that made the Rocky
Balboa saga such a hit, particularly the plight of the common man
as he struggles to maintain his dignity in the face of daunting
odds. Stallone portrays Johnny Kovak, a blue-collar worker in
late 1930s Cleveland who joins the nascent Federation of
Inter-State Truckers (the Teamsters, basically) and rises up
through the ranks until, a couple of decades later, he becomes
the union's head honcho. Along the way, his ambitions lead to an
alliance with organized crime, and while Kovak is an essentially
decent fellow, the compromises he's made eventually catch up to
him in the form of an investigation by a grandstanding, blowhard
U.S. Senator (Steiger) and big trouble with an oily mob boss (Lo
Bianco). All of that takes quite a while to play out; at 145
minutes, the movie is too long, especially considering that
Jewison and Eszterhas (Stallone co-wrote the script) take an
approach that's no more nuanced and subtle than, well, a flying
fist. It also seems somewhat dated; viewing it now, in an era
when CGI and other effects wizardry would have greatly enhanced
some of the bigger scenes (a truckers rally in Washington,
confrontations between union members and strike-breaking thugs),
one is reminded more of a '70s TV movie that the epic the
filmmakers clearly intended to create. The DVD includes no
extras. --Sam Graham