1978 Directed by Norman Jewison
Johnny Kovak joins the Teamsters trade-union in a local chapter in the 1930s and works his way up in the organization. As he climbs higher and higher his methods become more ruthless and finally senator Madison starts a campaign to find the truth about the alleged connections with the Mob.
Sylvester Stallone Rod Steiger Peter Boyle Melinda Dillon David Huffman Kevin Conway Tony Lo Bianco Cassie Yates Peter Donat John Lehne Henry Wilcoxon Richard Herd Tony Mockus Jr. Ken Kercheval Elena Karam Joe Tornatore James Karen Stuart Gillard Brian Dennehy Sam Chew Jr. Robert Lipton John Bleifer Frank McRae Rozsika Halmos Earl Montgomery Harry Basch Nada Rowand Chuck Gradi Alphonse Skerl Show All…
Símbolo de fuerza, FIST, P.Ě.S.T, 拳頭大風累, fist, fist - Stalone
Politics and human rights political, president, historical, politician or democracy political, democracy, president, documentary or propaganda racism, african american, powerful, hatred or slavery gangster, crime, criminal, violence or ruthless boxing, fighting, champion, sports or fighter Show All…
F.I.S.T. is a well-intentioned movie that manages to be compelling and worthwhile despite having a significant shortcoming. Norman Jewison's direction, with some superb cinematography by Laszlo Kovacs, follows a warehouse worker in Cleveland named Johnny Kovak (Sylvester Stallone), who becomes active and surges through the ranks of a labour union named the Federation of Inter-State Truckers (F.I.S.T.). The role of Kovak is both challenging and demanding, requiring an actor to convey a sense of cunning, intuitive intelligence; sadly, however, Stallone's performance calls attention to why his lukewarm abilities are constantly the target of ridicule.
Regrettably, Jewison builds the film, the first major picture for Stallone after the success of Rocky, around the once in vogue star, and the screenplay bears…
52 Years in 52 Weeks 2019: Film #6
Nobody's 100%... Nobody.
Excellent historical drama with one of Stallone's more layered performances. This is pretty classy for a Joe Eszterhas script and it's the first confrontation between Sly and Dennehy, making this some kind of spiritual First Blood predecessor.
Movie is too long, otherwise, I would give it a rating of 4/5 🌟. The last hour should have been summed up in 5-10 minutes.
F.I.S.T. is a 1978 film directed by Norman Jewison from a script by Joe Eszterhas and the film's star Sylvester Stallone which is a thinly disguised account of the life of Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa.
Stallone plays Hoffa-alike Johnny Kovak who, following a stand off with his employer over an unfair sacking, rises through the ranks of the fictionalised Federation of Inter-State Truckers union (F.I.S.T.), initially taking a defiant and just stand for his members rights before succumbing to underhand methods, corruption and an unsavoury association with the mob.
Much like 1976's Rocky - Stallone's breakthrough film just two years prior to this - F.I.S.T. spends the first half of its running time exploring the cliches of the poor…
"Nobody's 100%... Nobody."
It took an hour before I copped this Norman Jewison's drama was a Jimmy Hoffa biopic. Sylvester Stallone (actually trying to play a character) portrays the Teamster far more sympathetically & honourably than Pacino did in The Irishman.
Hot off the success of Rocky, Stallone seems certain he's making another Oscar winner. His ambition repeatedly gets the better of him in this pro-union epic, loosely and too reverentially based on the life of Jimmy Hoffa. Stallone can't act and his script is co-written with Joe Eszterhas, so F.I.S.T. seems fundamentally doomed. He also doesn't know how to write for women, which leaves Melinda Dillon (and the only other two ladies with speaking parts) with little to do except act coy before relenting and marrying the lunkhead.
Fortunately, Norman Jewison's direction is mostly on point and Laszlo Kovacs's cinematography gives this a polished, accomplished feel. Their efforts seem entirely at odds with Stallone. It's extraordinary watching him derail scenes that would've played better with almost any other actor.
Inspired by the life of Jimmy Hoffa, F.I.S.T. is a surprisingly good historical drama from Norman Jewison. The screenplay by Joe Eszterhas is excellent. These days, Eszterhas is mostly remembered for his big-paycheck erotic thrillers like Basic Instinct, but F.I.S.T. is a textbook example of how to make a historical biopic that’s over 2 hours long and spans decades but is still involving. There’s never any confusion about who’s who. Every character is memorable, and has a function in the narrative.
The film follows Johnny Kovak (Stallone), the son of Hungarian immigrants in Cleveland, from his beginnings as a labor organizer in the 1930s through his ascendancy to massive power as the president of F.I.S.T., the Federation of Inter-State Truckers.…
F.I.S.T. is interesting. Much better paced and more compelling than Hoffa, for instance. It has an epic quality to its tale of labor unions that is able to flesh out the complication of using flawed means to a noble end. I enjoyed the '30s period piece element more than the flash forward, but Stallone is a much more compelling screen presence as an older, more wizened union leader in the '70s.
So this is fine-to-good. But Melinda Dillon is completely wasted as a love interest that only has a modicum of an impact as a supportive wife at the end, and eventually you realize this perfectly okay movie is 2 and a half hours long. A good long movie is good. A bad long movie is bad. A merely fine long movie can sneak up on you as you start to dislike it, though.
"F.I.S.T - Ein Mann geht seinen Weg"
Durchschlagen,
draufhauen,
nach oben kämpfen.
Ein großes Thema atmosphärisch dicht und spannend umgesetzt.
Stallone mal anders!
Probs suffered big time from watching in two parts — totally accidentally split my viewing where there’s a narrative jump — but IMO this was a movie where the epic-scale two part narrative really killed any momentum, and the last hour or so felt so rushed. There wasn’t all that much momentum already, partly bc the script seems kind of confused about what story to tell - labor struggle, thinly veiled hoffa biography, morality tale on principle vs corruption, etc. - and partly bc unfortunately Stallone is just not convincing at all as a working class militant and pretty flat in general. So much so that even the tragic elements don’t hit like they could. Feels like just really drilling…
A decent story told throughout several decades, F.I.S.T. however has some issues. One of them is that some of Stallone's not work-related dialogue isn't that well written. Especially the side-story about his love life tends to be a bit forced, as if the screenwriters felt the need to make his character more well-rounded and/or likeable. Furthermore, some of the different jumps in time come across as very sudden. However, with a runtime of 120mins, director Norman Jewison does manage to keep everything interesting and plays out all different elements, such as friendship, loyalty, betrayal, wealth and expansion well. Lastly, I wish Rod Steiger could've been in it just a tad bit more.
