Word: hoffa
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...Hence Hoffa, an utterly externalized view of the corrupt, crusading boss of the Teamsters, James R. Hoffa. The R stood for Riddle, and David Mamet's lean script is content to leave him at that. Hoffa does stuff -- bullies management, connives with the Mob -- but who is he? The movie gives not a clue. Jack Nicholson looks eerily like his subject, and he has the abrupt gestures and staccato voice of a man who overcomes lack of eloquence by force of will. But director Danny DeVito, who also plays Hoffa's closest ally, gets way too fond...
...posits a conflict for control of a family toy company between a near holy fool (Robin Williams) and his uncle, a retired Army general (Michael Gambon) who wants to convert the plant to military-weapons production. Both are predictable types. Their employees are so sweetly innocent one longs for Hoffa's Teamsters to come in and give them mean lessons. But everyone's main function is to trigger special effects and lend scale to production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti's overweening sets, which sometimes quote wittily from the modernist tradition (Dada, etc.) but also overuse the pachyderm motif at the heavy...
...boss Carey is taking a Hoffa-like stand...
...supervising the Teamsters following a 1989 settlement of a racketeering suit that charged the union's leadership with having a "devil's pact" with the Mob. The record spoke for itself. Four of the union's past seven presidents had been indicted on criminal charges; three of them (including Hoffa) went to prison. To avoid a government-imposed trusteeship, the Teamsters agreed to allow the 1.6 million members to freely elect their president. In the past, the boss had always been handpicked by a coterie of top brass...
...open convention in 1991, which paved the way for Carey's election. At the event, union leaders rejected a proposal to amend the constitution to boot out their "general president emeritus-for-life." And who holds that prestigious post because of his "good-standing membership" ? Who else but Jimmy Hoffa, missing in action, perhaps, but proving once again that the rank and file never gets what the rank and file deserves...