Fat City, ciudad dorada

John Huston's 1972 production of FAT CITY is a masterpiece of film-making and acting. It's more than just a movie of boxing, it's symbolic of the American Dream gone depressingly wrong. Stacy Keach in the finest role of his outstanding career is symbolic of "every-man". His dreams are based on professional successes, which by gaining money and fame, he will be happy in his life. As we know in so many cases, that obtaining fame and money leads many people down an even deeper road of depression and self-destruction. For without emotional success, without love, a person is empty inside. A powerful film. Not a boxing film at all. Boxing is merely the symbolism here; fighting to succeed. "I win the fight and I get my wife back", says Keach's character, Billy Tully.

A great movie, but one that leaves you feeling sad; pondering your own hopes, dreams, and desires. A remarkable supporting cast, high-lighted by a young Jeff Bridges, make FAT CITY one of John Huston's most memorable films. A Champion of movie-making.

I had deliberately overlooked Fat City in the past believing it to be yet another twist on the formulaic and Hollywoodization of boxing stories. Was I wrong! I'm so glad that I unexpectedly caught this and was riveted from the get go. Fat City is an amazing film, made even more stellar by the casting of Stacy Keach, Jeff Bridges, Candy Clark and Nick Colasanto. It is hard to distinguish between these marvelous actors as their performances, under the hands of the maestro John Huston, are incredible. Stacy Keach is the focus however, and he carries the film with the able performances of the aforementioned. I believe this to be one of the most overlooked films of all time.

The characters are a bunch of losers, but they don't know they're losers and keep reiterating their dreams. They operate on a level that is below average and live in impoverished surroundings, always believing that something good is around the corner. There is no big win in this, the wins remain around the corner.

There's basically no beginning, middle and end. It is a study of the underbelly of a town in California, the seedy bars, the dirty restaurants, life in the one room with kitchen-in-a-corner of a walk-up fleabag hotel. Stacy Keach pulls you into this world, he lives and breathes the character he plays down to the last few minutes of screen time when he takes a look around the rathole of a restaurant he's in, surrounded by people like himself and the film freezes for about a minute before it moves on.

You catch his stark awareness at that moment. And all of his life, past, present and future becomes crystal clear to him. You don't think he's going to do much with this newfound insight. It doesn't matter. And that's the point. Bleak and beautiful. All in the same minute of time. 9 out of 10. Thanks once again, Mr. Huston.

The 1970s produced some of the greatest American movies of all time, that's indisputable. But while everyone focuses on (the admittedly very good) more famous works by Scorsese and Coppola, many equally worthwhile movies get little attention - 'Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia', 'Scarecrow', 'Fingers', 'Tracks', 'The Panic In Needle Park', 'Blue Collar', and this one, arguably John Huston's most underrated film. The four leads Stacey Keach ('The Ninth Configuration'), Jeff Bridges ('The Last Picture Show'), Susan Tyrrell ('The Killer Inside Me'), and Candy Clark ('American Graffiti') are all outstanding, and in Keach's case it's possibly his finest performance to date. What an underrated actor Keach is! This is a powerful and haunting look at the underbelly of American working class life, a subject very rarely dealt with honestly in contemporary Hollywood films. 'Fat City' doesn't deserve its obscurity. It is a small masterpiece. Highly recommended to people who value downbeat and realist dramas more than dumbed down popcorn "entertainment".

The down-to-earth tale of two small hall boxers -- at the opposite ends of their careers -- and the blows they take in and out of the ring.

This is one of the best American movies ever about normal working class lives where failure is common and the only thing you can do is pretend otherwise or drug it all away to nothing. I know why so many people prefer Rocky to this -- this is too real for them. Indeed it is almost too real for me!

Stacey Keach was given the role of lifetime in this. He really does look like a failing boxer turned to flab (although maybe that is nature -- not punches!) trying to find a life (of sorts) beyond the ring. Bridges really does look and sound like the daydreamer believer that makes the boxing game go round. Johnny No Talent who thinks he is Mike Tyson when his face finally clears up.

They don't make films like this anymore. The Europeans can, although they are rarely shown and end up too self indulgent. Everyone here gets what they deserve, which is sadly, very little. That is what sport is about in real life -- lots of people failing so that are very small few can succeed. The best the majority can hope for is some exercise and comradeship.

(This contrasts with most sports movies -- which are about glory. Or at least glory through struggle.)

This is the best late John Huston film and every single frame is a frame of reality and believability. Maybe that is what leads so many people to say "so what", the world outside their window has many of the same elements and there are many times you feel you are -- indeed -- looking at real life.

American audiences don't generally go in for realistic stories of human despair and suffering that offer very little in the way of hope or relief. This may explain why John Huston's Fat City has been condemned to obscurity, a real shame considering what a great flick it is. It's the sort of movie you see and remember but can't quite pick it out of a line-up... a shuffling, mumbling story of down-and-out pugs in an off-the-map burgh. You're taunted with the possibilities of the story picking up to... well if not epic at least noteworthy proportions... but, all of the characters' minor victories are mitigated by their simultaneous defeats. Keach's Tully is the main thrust of the story, though it tends to veer off on the occasional tangent. A has-been who possibly never really was, crushed by the departure of his wife and overwhelmed by the constant little defeats in his life. Huston really drives this point home, that all of these little defeats add up. Without giving too much away, suffice to say Fat City is a film where mood overshadows plot. The mood is indelibly rendered by Conrad Hall's dark, dirty images, which nearly swallow the characters in the depth of their shadows. Watching it back to back with fellow pugilist opus Raging Bull (1980), it's easy to see that Huston was a keen observer of human behaviour, while Scorsese was a keen observer of Hollywood films of the thirties. And don't even talk about Rocky. I would compare it favourably with Barbet Schroeder's Barfly (1987), another film about fringe life in California, and even Vincent Gallo's excellent Buffalo '66 (1998), though of the three it is the bleakest and the least accessible.