Product Details

• Actors: Sylvester Stallone, Rod Steiger, Peter Boyle, Melinda Dillon, David Huffman
• Directors: Norman Jewison
• Writers: Sylvester Stallone, Joe Eszterhas
• Producers: Norman Jewison, Gene Corman, Patrick J. Palmer
• Format: PAL
• Language: English
• Region: Region 2 (Read more about DVD formats.)
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Run Time: 145 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00009B0NU
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #267,066 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Considering that Sylvester Stallone's first film of any real distinction was Rocky, an Academy Award winner for best picture and an instant classic, it's a safe bet that he had free rein when it came to his next project. In F.I.S.T. (released in 1978), he chose a vehicle that matched him with a big-time director (Norman Jewison of In the Heat of the Night and The Thomas Crown Affair renown), a screenwriter on the verge of stardom (Joe Eszterhas, whose future would include Flashdance and Basic Instinct), and veteran actors like Rod Steiger, Peter Boyle, and Tony Lo Bianco. Yet while F.I.S.T. is filmmaking on a grand scale, it also has the underlying themes that made the Rocky Balboa saga such a hit, particularly the plight of the common man as he struggles to maintain his dignity in the face of daunting odds. Stallone portrays Johnny Kovak, a blue-collar worker in late 1930s Cleveland who joins the nascent Federation of Inter-State Truckers (the Teamsters, basically) and rises up through the ranks until, a couple of decades later, he becomes the union's head honcho. Along the way, his ambitions lead to an alliance with organized crime, and while Kovak is an essentially decent fellow, the compromises he's made eventually catch up to him in the form of an investigation by a grandstanding, blowhard U.S. Senator (Steiger) and big trouble with an oily mob boss (Lo Bianco). All of that takes quite a while to play out; at 145 minutes, the movie is too long, especially considering that Jewison and Eszterhas (Stallone co-wrote the script) take an approach that's no more nuanced and subtle than, well, a flying fist. It also seems somewhat dated; viewing it now, in an era when CGI and other effects wizardry would have greatly enhanced some of the bigger scenes (a truckers rally in Washington, confrontations between union members and strike-breaking thugs), one is reminded more of a '70s TV movie that the epic the filmmakers clearly intended to create. The DVD includes no extras. --Sam Graham

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One of Stallone's better efforts, October 20, 2003

By	R. J. Claster "rjclaster" (Van Nuys, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Fist [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This movie from the late 70s, loosely based on the life of Jimmy Hoffa, about a labor leader, Frank Kovak, who makes a Faustian bargain with the mob for which he ultimately pays the price, was done before Stallone became locked into the ironjawed superhero mode. In the early scenes of the movie, he is still able to display the qualities of charm, humor and humanity that distinguished his performance in the orginal Rocky and, further back, in The Lords of Flatbush.
Moreover, the film is graced with strong supporting performances. In particular, I would single out Tony Lo Bianco's performance as the mob boss, Babe Milano, to whom Stallone turns when the survival of his trucker's union is on the line, for its chillingly effective qualities of understated and insinuating menace, especially from an actor who I have found to be prone to overacting.
The main criticism that one could make of this effort if one references it to the life of Hoffa is that Kovak is treated as genuinely heroic instead of the corrupted person that Hoffa in fact became, for although Kovak made a deal with the mob, more specifically, Babe Milano, it is made clear that he did so only because he thought it was necessary to insure the continued existence of his union when its striking members were being beaten up by company goons, not for his personal aggrandizement. Moreover, for what it is worth, I remember reading at the time of the film's release that Stallone insisted that the character be portrayed this way. In spite of this caveat, I find Fist to be both dramatically compelling and strongly acted.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why this movie is not a hit and on DVD is BEYOND me!, January 23, 2002

By	Andy Thorson (Baytown, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fist [VHS] (VHS Tape)

First off, Sylvester Stallone is my favorite actor and secondly I believe this to be probably one of his best films (besides Rocky) and why it was not a hit is beyond me because it really is a great story and Stallone does a great job in the acting --- its 2 1/2 hours long but I throughly enjoyed every minute of it and can't wait til I can get my own copy and watch it again.

If you like Stallone this is a DEFINITE must.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Stallone's first take at anti-hero, October 17, 2005

By	Gert Marincowitz "DVD buff" (Pretoria, South Africa) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: F.I.S.T. (DVD)

F.I.S.T. scriptwriter Joe Ezsterhas recalled the explosive collaboration with his "co-writer" Sylvester Stallone in his autobiography published last year. Robert De Niro, still considered to be the best actor of his generation and at the top of his creative peak shortly after his Oscar-nominated performance in Taxi Driver (1976), was originally asked by director Norman Jewison to take on the blue-collar anti-hero. But De Niro could not make up his mind and by the time he finally agreed, it was too late - another Italian-American upcoming star already agreed to make Johnny Kovac his first project after the roaring Oscar success of Rocky (1976).

Jewison happily agreed to Stallone's request at rewriting Ezsterhas's script - after all, Stallone just received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay for Rocky (as well as a Best Actor nomination, competing with the likes of De Niro). But Ezsterhas, who spent several years researching for his account of the tragedy of the union movement, was less happy that Stallone would also receive a writing credit - the only thing that Stallone did was to shorten Ezsterhas' uneconomically (from a Hollywood feature perspective) long script.

The production of F.I.S.T. (1978) was characterized by a growing confrontation between Stallone and both the director and ("real") writer of the film. Jewison bought Ezsterhas's view of Johnny Kovac (loosely modeled on Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa) as a corrupted leader destroyed by his dealings with the mafia. Stallone, however, preferred a more Rocky-esque view of Kovac, more along the lines of trade union icon Walter Reuther than the thuggish Hoffa.

Stallone was very unhappy with the end result and refused to do any promotional work for F.I.S.T. Jewison filmed a number of alternative endings and, after audiences at a pre-screening session reacted indifferently to the various endings, Jewison decided to end the movie as he originally planned (before Stallone's botched attempt to interfere with Jewison's plans). Let us not spoil the movie except to say that this was a very un-Stallone-ish ending. Compare this ending to the original ending of First Blood (1982), now available for the first time on the Ultimate Edition DVD released last year. If we compare the ending of the original Get Carter (1971) and the Stallone version released in 2000, we see that, as in the case of First Blood (based on David Morrell's 1972 novel) Stallone's heroic conception of what is essentially a 1970s anti-hero won the day.

Despite the negative critical reception at the time of F.I.S.T.'s release, critics today will agree that this was one of Stallone's best performances in which he (despite the Rambo-esque aggressiveness) actually gave a fairly credible dramatic performance of blue-collar vulnerability along the lines of Rocky and Copland (1997). At the time of Rocky, Stallone was compared with the likes of De Niro and in Copland Stallone actually plays alongside De Niro - but their portrayal of anti-heroes were polar opposites. Notice the difference between boxing champions Rocky Balboa and Jake La Motta of Raging Bull (1980), between disturbed, vengeful Vietnam vets John Rambo (as portrayed in the sequels) and Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver - and between Johnny Kovac and Noodles (gangster involved in trade union corruption) of Once Upon A Time in the West (1984).