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movie review - Blue Collar

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

This is a 25-year-old flick by the writer/director of Taxi Driver. It's a drama starring got Yaphet Kotto, Harvey Keitel and - surprising - Richard Pryor as three guys on the auto line in Detroit. They're working for a union that's become complacent and corrupt, and are making so little that the characters played by Keitel and Pryor have night jobs.

The trio are convinced that the union is screwing them, and hit upon the plan of robbing the union's vault. They do so, and get only about $600 from the vault. When the union declares that $10000 has been taken, our trio decides to act on *something else* they found in the vault with the money. And that's when things go to hell.

This is a great flick from the era when mainstream Hollywood wadn't afraid to slowly build a movie to a crunching finale. I'd never heard of it before it turned up on the tube, but I really recommend it.

Recommended.