Hoffa

Jimmy Hoffa ran America's largest truckers' union, did business with the mob, went to prison and vanished in 1975. His body was never found. The film tells his story in flashback while he waits at a truck stop shortly before his death. The subject is not crime but the bargaining logic of union work. Hoffa genuinely wins things for the drivers and sees no problem in using the mob's money to do it; the film neither clears him nor condemns him, it shows how those two things sit inside one man. The form runs in two times and is heavy: long strike sequences, truck convoys, hearings. Danny DeVito directs and plays Bobby Ciaro, the fictional lieutenant at Hoffa's side, a character written in to give the narrative a witness. The screenplay is by David Mamet. Jack Nicholson wore heavy prosthetics and worked on Hoffa's speech from recordings. The production was expensive and lost a great deal at the box office, though Nicholson's performance remains the most defended thing in it. Armand Assante plays the man on the mob side. Who it is for: viewers curious about American union history and character-driven biography. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a clear moral conclusion; the film moves between admiration and distance and settles on neither.