Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Great Film overall

Excellent adaptation.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

You work hard, but cant pay the bills. How is that any different from nowadays? Back in the seventies wages got frozen. Since then the hard working people got more and more into trouble with inflating prices while wages didnt rise accordingly. The Unions who were suppose to look out for the working people were powerless or corrupt. Money troubles can lead to crime out of desperation. That's what happened in the story of "Blue Collar" in which Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yapfet Kotto play 3 factory workers who plan a heist, because they cant pay the bills no more. Will they get away with it?Special praise for the acting performance of Richard Pryor, Yaphet Kotto and Harvey Keitel. It is really a characters movie. Acting is paramount. And everybody excells in it. Truly excells! "Blue Collar" is without a doubt the best and most serious work of Richard Pryor. No jokes here. Stay away, far away if you wanna see a fun movie. "Blue Collar" is as real and as bleak as it gets, directed by none other then the legendary Paul Schrader who also wrote the script of the Robert de Niro classic "Taxi Driver".At an endnote I wanna praise the soundtrack by Jack Nitzsche, Ry Cooder and Captain Beefheart. Anyone familiar with these names will immediately raise their ears. And those ears will get pummeled by terrific pounding blues stompers, like the working men in this story get pummeled too...

Following his screen writing credits on classics like Obsession and Taxi Driver, Paul Schrader would make his first foray behind the camera with the 1978 film Blue Collar. Spotlighting the exploitation of proletariat workers at the hands of powers at be, the film ranks among Schraeder's best and remains a quintessential piece of 1970's U.S. independent cinema.Blue Collar revolves around three workers at a Detroit auto plant; Zeke (Richard Pryor), Jerry (Harvey Keitel) and Smokey (Yaphet Kotto). Perpetually mistreated by their higher-ups and barely making enough money to feed their families, the film follows the group as they hatch a desperate plan to rob their union. Carrying through with the plan, the men end up stumbling upon evidence of behind-the- scenes corruption, setting the stage for the film's second half where the big wigs gradually take down each member of the group.Shot with an air of gritty realism, Blue Collar is a low budget drama with a Marxist message - powerfully channelling themes of race, class conflict and white collar crookedness. Though similar contemporaneous films have endured better in the annals of film history, Schraeder's debut remains an overlooked gem - one worthy of being dusted off and given a second look.

This is a great example of the movie makers art. I had no interest in the subject matter, but within minutes I was interested, and within the half hour I was hooked. By the second half I was engrossed in the characters and the story line. The ending cleverly became a self-fulfilling prophecy - The Man want's to put you in your place, and you'll fall for it every time.There is a lot of profanity in this movie but Richard Pryor is in his element. This is the world of the blue collar worker, warts and all. This movie does a great job in highlighting the best of the life these guys have, but worse, it shows the quiet desperation these men are forced to endure every day and how easily they can be manipulated. These deeper themes do not bog the movie down, fortunately, its depth is hidden behind a good story and top performances from Pryor, Keitel and Kotto. A great movie will keep you intrigued while viewing it and thinking about it afterwards, regardless of the subject matter. Blue Collar is just such a movie, and I recommend making the effort to watch it if you get a chance.

How many times can one film be reffered to as "underrated" here on IMDb? In the case of this film it can't be said enough. This is the kind of hard hitting, emotionally involving film that made the 70s such an amazing decade in screen history. The acting is superb; without a doubt Richard Pryor's finest effort. Harvel Kietel is his usual magnetic self and Yaphet Kotto is understated yet electric at the same time. Thie dialogue is unlike what you would hear coming out of Hollywood today, and thats too bad. It hits you in the gut and makes you wince; which is as it should be dealing with this material.If you have not yet done so SEE THIS FILM!