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'Fat City':A Small,Fine FilmAt th* Capri“Fat City” breathes the life of the boxing ring, the small* time ring where the takings, even If you’re a winner, aremostly lumps.Director John Huston’s solid, gritty film takes a tough, 'and sympathetic, look at the life of a winner turned loser. Seedy hotel rooms, twelfth-rate bars, an almost ludicrous hoping against hope “to get back in shape” at last, scrounging for a living doing stoop labor — that’s the life of Billy Tully.Stacy Keach plays Billy from the inside out, seeming to take on the entire character of the scraggly but gutty boxer — at 30 over the hill but refusing, through a haze of booze and lost jobs, to give up.Director Huston has man* aged to steer the entire cast into using the same technique of realism. Jeff Bridges as the promising young fighter plays his role with just the proper amount of dttmb-but* happy naivete. But probably the best role after Reach’s is that of Susan Tyrrei, stunningly real as the drunk* en Oma, a lush who makes Idiotic drunken talk sound so real it could be coming from the next bar stool.Huston's setting — Stockton, Calif., and environs — is acharacter in itself. He uses grubby hotels and scruffy street characters to background his story, setting the unreality ofthe dreams of these small-timesagainst the shabby reality of their lives and the alibis they I live on.All of their lives are like Billy Tully’s. In one stabbing insight, he sums it all up: “Before you can get rolling, your life makes a beeline for the drain.” ,Huston makes author Leonard'Gardner’s point clear: It’s hard to tell the winners from the losers at this level of the fight game. The only winners in “Fat City” — an old jazz term signifying the good life — are John Huston, for having made a small and fine film, and the viewer. —Joan Bunke
Newspaper Details
Des Moines Tribune
Des Moines, Iowa, US
Thu, Oct 19, 1972
Page 34
Full Page
Clipped by
Rotten T.
USA 18 Jun 2020
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