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Show Review direction feeds Tat City' by Huston. Usually sports figures in a film come off little better than the cameos they are, but this is a picture where the fighters are good actors, and vice versa. One amusing scene has trainer Aragon and manager Colasanto exchanging ex-changing stories, one being the tale of a ring physician who can't puncture the leathery skin of a fighter. After he manages to get a needle in, he can only get a blood sample that is black. Director gets credit But whatever credit is due must be given mostly to director John Huston. He opens the film with shots of Fat City, as played by Stockton, California: empty coliseums; teenagers leaning against chain-link fences; unemployed unem-ployed derelicts smoking on porches or wandering down to the nearest bar; seedy businessmen getting haircuts in small, hot Ibarbershops; in short, a city whose people, streets, and buildings are baking to a rancid crisp under the California sun. Huston maintains this throughout his film, and it is the most superb duplication of a milieu ever seen by this writer. Near miss After all that praise, one hates to put a qualifier on it, but it must be done. For all the superb acting, fine direction, and accuracy of detail, we are not allowed close enough to these people to feel for them. We can only watch them slide into the abyss. There is no poignancy to go along with the film's uncompromising uncom-promising cruelty. Because of this, we are left with very good Huston, but not great Huston. Rather than being a timeless classic, "Fat City" is a near-miss. by RICK BROUGH Chronicle Staff John Huston has by now Jablished himself as a director of able note. One of the f ms hi helped him to do so was called S it Jungle," made in 1950. cethen, in parts of aties or in SSe townships, the jungle has been cleared away to make a spool. One might call it The Boulevard of Hopeless Dreams. Lnard Gardner, in his best-selling Lei called it "Fat City," and that is also the name of the film written bv him and directed by Huston. The film ostensibly is about boxing but it deals with a particular brand 'of boxer; the tank-town pugilist who dreams of becoming another Muhammed Ali or Joe Frazier, but who wakes from his dreams in a dirty, cheap hotel room and looks at his torn, battered face in a dusty mirror. Such is Billy Tully (Stacy Keach), young by most rules of measure, but over the hill by boxing's standards. He promises himself constantly that he will make a comeback, but can't train for more than 10 minutes without pulling a muscle. He's left to wander from one dark, smoky bar to another, or ship out with the busloads of temporary farm help to sweat under the unfamiliar rural sunshine harvesting onions or walnuts. Finds kindred spirit Occasionally, hope will rear its ambiguous head. Billy finds a kindred spirit in Oma (Susan Tyrell) a seamy bar-fly, and the two decide to take up house-keeping. She ejects her black lover, throwing his clothes in a cardboard box in the corner, and Billy vows to make a come-back. But the two are tormented by memories of the past. Oma is an unstable type, having run through several lovers and husbands, including in-cluding a Chicano policeman who was killed in the line of duty, and is torn between her loneliness and her compulsion to nag, berate and claw those who are close to her. Billy, with an ex-wife behind him, is haunted by his past boxing triumphs, and the defeat that ended them, when his manager was too busy to advise him and sent him alone to Panama City to fight art-important bout, which his opponent won by cutting Billy's eyes with razor blades hidden in his gloves. Bout finally comes Unable to confront the ghosts of their pasts, the two snap and tear at each other over dinners of bad steak and canned peas. Billy's first return bout finally comes, and he wins, but at the cost of a bleeding eye, and with a measly winner's purse of $100 as payment. He returns home to Oma and finds her former lover standing in the doorway handing him his clothes in a cardboard box. While we watch Billy's fall (or continued decline) we see the slow, uncertain rise of Ernie Munger (Jeff Bridges) a hot-shot 18-year-old who boxes only for fun until he meets Billy Tully, who directs him to his former manager (Nick Colasanto). He stumbles, he makes mistakes, and takes various and sundry lumps, but slowly makes his way up the ladder. In the same way, he stumbles into marriage after his girlfriend tells him that his mistakes have not been made solely in the ring. The parallel lines begin to converge. Their relationship, too, is loving but abrasive, and their debates over matters of virginity and fulfillment begin to resemble the dinner table battles of Billy and Oma. Terror at old age At the end of the film, both men sit in a cheap cafe, drinking coffee served by an old Negro whose weary bones have reduced him to a near-catatonic shuffle. Billy, drunken and disheartened, slumps over his brew, gazing with terror at old age, and his protege wears a forced smile on his face, ' and wonders how he can get rid of this punchy old embarassment. The happy newlyweds are the youthful equivalent of the pug and the barfly. bar-fly. When a picture shoots on location, and uses the surroundings as a major character, there is always the danger that the actors will stick out like artificial sore thumbs. But here the actors, guided by Huston, excel in their ability to become histrionic chameleons. Stacy Keach is Billy Tully, angry, bitter lonesome, sometimes gentle and patient, shambling around like a man perpetually on the ropes. Fine acting Although her character has less range, Susan Tyrell is also fine as Oma, a foul-mouthed Raggedy Ann, with glossy skin that looks as though it's been polished with a combination of alcohol and tears. Jeff Bridges, as the eager young fighter, and Candy Clark, as his bubble-gum bride, are also good. A particular surprise comes from the fighters, such as Art Aragon, used |