good back-story, and good acting

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

I knew this film was one listed in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I didn't know anything else about the film besides this, this was good enough reason for me to try it, directed by John Huston (The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Asphalt Jungle, The African Queen, The Man Who Would Be King). Basically at a gym in Stockton, California, past his prime boxer Billy Tully (Stacy Keach) meets eighteen-year-old Ernie Munger (Jeff Bridges), they getting into shape and spar with each other. Tully sees potential in young Ernie, he suggests he looks up his former manager and trainer Ruben (Nicholas Colasanto), he tells about how impressed he is with the kid to aggressive barfly Oma Lee Greer (Oscar nominated Susan Tyrrell) and her easygoing boyfriend Earl (Curtis Cokes), Tully is newly inspired and keen to get back in the ring himself. Ever since his wife left him Tully's life has been a mess, he drinks too much and cannot hold down a job, he picks fruit and vegetables to make ends meet, he still blames Ruben for mishandling his last fight. Earl is sent to prison for a few months, this allows Tully to try moving in with Ola, but the relationship between them is rocky. Munger loses his first fight and gets his nose broken, he is knocked out in his second fight as well, Munger gets forced into marrying Faye (Candy Clark) when she becomes pregnant, he starts picking fruit himself to make some money. In his first fight back in the ring, Tully fights against tough Mexican boxer Lucero (Sixto Rodriguez), he is much older and in considerable pain, they knock each other out before Tully is declared the winner, but his celebration is brief as he is only paid $100. Tully ends his business partnership with Ruben, he then returns to Oma's apartment, Earl is there and still paying the rent, Earl assures him that alcoholic Oma wants nothing to do with Tully anymore. One night, Munger is returning home from a fight, he finds Tully drunk in the street, he tries to ignore him, but he reluctantly agrees to go for a coffee with Tully. The two men sit and drink, Tully has sees strange things while looking at all the people around him, he almost breaks down with how his career is failing while Munger's is progressing, Munger tells him he should leave, but Tully wants to stay and talk some more, they continue to sit and drink coffee in silence. Also starring Art Aragon as Babe, Sixto Rodriguez as Lucero, Billy Walker as Wes, Wayne Mahan as Buford and Ruben Navarro as Fuentes. Keach (whose part was originally offered to Marlon Brando) is good as the prize-fighter going down in the dumps, and Bridges does well as the young contender on the rise, their rocky relationship certainly creates some tension, most boxing movies have more fights, full of blood, sweat and tears, this film focuses more on the hardships on the career side of it, it is slow at times, but overall an interesting enough sports drama. Good!

The Late/Great John Huston delivers a gritty, complex film with 'Fat City'. It's a deeply stirring tale about human emotions & the silences we have within. The Terrific Performances only add to its pluses.'Fat City' Synopsis: Two men, working as professional boxers, come to blows when their careers each begin to take opposite momentum.'Fat City' is unapologetically saddening & emotionally charging. Leonard Gardner's Screenplay, which is based upon his own novel, moves from being tragic to realistic. However, the slow-pace is a downer. The film unfolds in sleepy mode, luckily, the drama keeps you moving. Huston's Direction is excellent. He's captured every moment with flourish. Cinematography is top-class. Editing is the only weak link. Performance-Wise: Jeff Bridges is absolutely fantastic, delivering a great early performance. Stacy Keach is outstanding, as well. The Late Susan Tyrrel is slightly over-the-top. On the whole, 'Fat City' isn't entirely perfect, but its a worth watching film anyhow.

Billy Tully is a broken down boxer approaching his thirtieth birthday, and one day he goes to the gym to work out, when he meets Ernie, a young boxer. He tells the boxer to go see his old manager, and he does. Then Billy goes to a bar, where he meets Oma and Earl. Oma is a loud mouth, and she is drunk. Then Billy goes home and Ernie goes to meet Ruben, Billy's old manager. Ruben sees talent in Ernie, and immediately signs him on.Meanwhile Billy, unable to hold a job, goes out to pick onions, looking for some work. After work, he heads to a bar and meets Oma. Earl has been sent to prison, and she is all alone. They talk for a while and then Billy convinces Oma to let him take her home. They start to live together, and Ernie begins losing fights. Then Billy goes to Ruben, as he has decided he is going to box again.This is an unusual film. Up until now, I've always been able to pinpoint Huston's style, maybe it isn't continuous, but usually I can identify a film as a Huston. This is an exception to the rule. When I was watching this film, I could find no link at all to Huston. The closest cousin to this film's style would be an early Scorsese. It is the grittiest of the gritty, and the whole thing sparkles with 70s grime. It feels nothing like a Huston.In the lead role, Stacey Keach must have known this was his shot, and he plays it like it. His portrait of a down on his luck boxer is intense, especially with his scenes with Susan Tyrell. Their scenes are frighteningly realistic. Keach fills his role with great gusto and life. Billy Tully feels like a real guy, and Keach doesn't make him sympathetic either. No, that job belongs to Jeff Bridges. Bridges is certainly very good, but his character seems very one note.However, his scenes with Candy Clark are well done, and he is certainly a good actor, but Ernie is really a one note guy. Nicolas Colestano as Ruben is excellent, and his manager is full of life. However, aside from Keach, the film's greatest performance comes from Susan Tyrell. She is excellent as Oma, a bundle of nerves who alienates everyone she loves, it's a great performance. Her scenes with Keach are some of the film's best.The film was written by Leonard Gardener, adapted from his own novel. The film isn't breaking any new ground with a story of a down on his luck boxer, but Gardener fills his script with enough interesting scenes to keep it from being tired. The score is good, and the opening song sets the mood nicely. Earlier I spoke about the scenes between Keach and Tyrell as being some of the films' best. That is true, but the films best scene is definitely the ending. It speaks volumes without saying much.The cinematography by Conrad Hall is very spare, shot in brown, dingy hues. It succeeds at showing a world that exists, but no one wants to admit exists. This brings me to Huston's direction. It's very interesting. As I said earlier, the film seems more like it was directed by someone else, but what does that have to say about Huston's direction? Well, for one, it shows exactly how much range Huston had as a director. To compare this to something like The African Queen seems odd, but that they were directed by the same man shows exactly how much talent he had, and how he wouldn't conform to a single genre.The film is certainly very well made, but it can be hard to watch. I don't quite know how to describe it, other than to say that it just feels too gritty and depressing. It gets hard to watch after a while, until near the end. Then there is the film's subject. It is about boxing, so there are scenes were characters box. To be fair, this isn't exactly Raging Bull, so the boxing scenes aren't outstanding. They are well shot, and because you care about the characters, you have some investment with them, but they go on for a little to long and they could have been cut.Overall, this is not a bad film at all. It's quite good actually, but it feels draining despite how excellent the performances are. If you feel like a boxing movie, this is one of the best. If you feel like a Huston, this is about how atypical it gets. If you like a good movie, you're on the right track.Fat City, 1972, Starring: Stacey Keach, Jeff Bridges and Susan Tyrell, Directed by John Huston, 7.5/10 (B+).(This is part of an ongoing project to watch and review every John Huston movie. You can read this and other reviews at http://everyjohnhustonmovie.blogspot.ca/).

Fat City is something extraordinary, alive with the sort of dialogue that movies ordinarily can't offer, that characterizes time, place, atmosphere, individual, while apparently not progressing. Nobody's ever able to say just what's on their mind or, if they do, to acknowledge it. "Is it my fault that you can't fit in?" shouts Oma at her black lover in the middle of her declarations of love for him in a packed bar. At other times, the characters exchange truisms as earnestly as marriage vows.For awhile, Huston had been dabbling with movies like he wasn't emotionally invested. Both an extremely realistic glimpse at the basement steps of the fight game and a poignant study of the human situation, this shows us the legendary director working with his time-honored diligence but without resort to either the laughable or sensationalistic props that had seemed to distance the director from his then-recent films, as if to deflect any true feelings. This shrewd, humanist magnum opus is too teeming of soul to be as utterly dismal as it sounds. Negativity and hopefulness are irrelevant to the sympathy articulated in Gardner's screenplay devoid of melodrama or masturbatory philosophizing.Two men, hardly a decade apart in age, one with a life of meaninglessness ahead of him, one with meaningless life already behind. This is what John Huston has to use in this astutely low-key story of unending loss and he handles it with a horizontal, hard-bitten frankness and makes it into one of his preeminent works. The young man is one of those unflappable, strapping youngsters who appear to be replete with vigor as teenagers. Then you come across them after a couple years and they're clerking a register and daydreaming. The older man was a boxer some time ago, and came close enough to distinction to be troubled by it now as a transient. Huston's muted study of despairing lives and the escape paths people create for themselves, strikingly shot by the great Conrad Hall, sets these men in Stockton and stands the despair of their lives against the single-minded perseverance of their hopefulness.The Stockton in his film is present in an America we have a propensity to put out of our minds about the more the divide grows between rich and poor. It is the rival of the image favored by boards of trade or business networks. The characters live their lives in discolored flats with screen doors that pound with the current. They interact in the sort of bar that promotes in its window the charge for a shot and a beer. They get it in their blood that they'll need a phenomenon to improve their existence, since they know truly that they don't have potential. So they fantasize, and put confidence in outside chances. Even after all the hours of keeping fit and pump-up sessions, the boxers in Huston's thirtieth film feel little belief in themselves. They exchange big talk for buoyancy.Huston's boxers are Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges. Keach plays Tully, whose boxing career is long past, though he extraordinarily pulls himself together for one last conquest. Bridges plays Ernie, who never even has what Tully lost. He does have a sturdy body, some good steps, but mostly he's a sucker. Huston tells his tale in a lingering, moody way, and characters waft into it and remain as they have nothing else to do. There's Oma, a distended lush, who comes by Tully while her lover is doing time. She's thick, loutish and all the other things we suppose about people who never had an education and imbibe cream sherry all day. But she has a spirit, and she trusts in all the immature chestnuts that do her for a viewpoint.While Bridges' scenes with his girlfriend are stunningly commonplace, the scenes between Keach and Tyrrell are imbued with an enthralling theatrical realism as close to the inimitable dialogue scenes in Cassavetes films as anything I've seen.Faith is vital to these people since there's nothing else, not even the understanding of faith. Consider Ruben, who oversees the local gym, manages fighters and sponsors sessions when he can. He's aged and penniless and in a fading business, yet when fresh meat drifts into the gym, he gets that old butterfly in the belly. He takes his boxers over to the next town for a fight, and returns them when they've lost, incessantly talking about Madison Square Garden.The movie's boundaries are teeming with minor, faultless character performances. Candy Clark is defenseless and blankly buoyant as Bridges' young, pregnant wife. She's used some inbred shrewdness to ensnare him into marriage, barely foreseeing what a dismal future she's securing for herself by working him prudently toward a proposal by making him feel like a total clown. Curtis Cokes as Oma's lover has a self-worth that won't submit to distrust. He treats Tully with mano-e-mano respect.The one performance in the movie I'm certain I will never put behind me comes from Sixto Rodriguez, an actor who doesn't speak one line. He plays a Mexican boxer, who once, momentarily, had repute, and comes in by bus to fight Tully. He comes to the stadium contained by a cosmic stillness and solitude. He pees blood, and we recognize his skeleton in the cupboard. He's in such agony he can hardly stand. But he goes out and fights.