Fat City is a small film directed on location in Stockton, California by legendary director John Huston.
It is about small time boxers and small time losers. Stacy Keach is a washed up boxer, a drunk, making a comeback but really not up to it. He is in a tempestuous relationship with Susan Tyrell who is magnificent as his drunk girlfriend. The booze oozes out of her pores and she really cracks that paralytic look in her face.
Jeff Bridges is the up and coming boxer but he immediately loses his early fights, he gets his pretty girlfriend, Candy Clark pregnant and gets some irregular work as a labourer sometimes working with Keach in the fields.
There is nothing grandiose or bombastic about Fat City. It really is introverted dealing with the underclass in the early 1970s. The location filming adds a lot of authenticity and rawness.
Keach who was a noted Shakespearean actor of the American stage is very believable. He plays not a has been but a never was, who wants to have that one final crack of something big but he will get nowhere it as he always gets sidetracked, usually by booze.
Bridges at the time was the young up and comer with a mixture of enthusiasm and wide eyed innocence. He was 23 years old when he made this film and was already a veteran with an Oscar nomination to his name as he was a child actor working in his father's show.
A critic pointed out something novel about this boxing film. These almost desperate people we meet go out of their way to be kind to each other no matter how hopeless their situation.
When Keach argues with Tyrell you expect that he will hit her. When her ex-boyfriend turns up, you again expect that he will get in a fight with Keach. However you find people struggling to be nice and civil to each other.
Boxing actually plays a small part in the film. Fat City is a forgotten gem of 1970s cinema.
