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Blue Collar (1978)
Director: Paul Schrader
Product Group: Video
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
ISBN: B00003ETHB
EAN: 9780764007613
UPC: 013131091533
VHS Tape
Running Time: 114 minutes
Original Release Date: 1978-02-10
Theatrical Release Date: 1978-02-10
Release Date: 2000-02-08
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
SKU: 08040175
Condition: Like New Like New
Comments: VHS tape in like new condition. From private collection so no rental or library stickers. Like new original uncut case. Play-tested and plays like new. Very nice movie.
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Editorial Reviews
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Amazon.com
Paul Schrader had established his reputation as a screenwriter (The Yakuza and Taxi Driver, among others) before embarking on his directorial debut. Blue Collar is the story of three working-class guys at the Checker auto plant who run their local union office. Richard Pryor delivers a funny, passionate, seething performance in one of his rare dramatic roles as a rabble-rousing union man. Trapped by family worries and crippling back taxes, he dreams up the robbery after scoping out the joint and enlists his coworker and buddies, family man Harvey Keitel and high-living bachelor Yaphet Kotto, who are in similar financial straits. This is a strictly amateur-hour heist, and their successful getaway is the last bit of good luck in store for the trio. The robbery turns up no cash, only incriminating files, and the inept thieves are soon blackmailing the powerful union, which fights back with force, seduction, and murder. Schrader's first film has little of the polish or style he developed by American Gigolo, but his portrait of lower middle class families in 1970s Detroit, interracial relations, and male camaraderie is sharp and insightful. His attention to detail shows in every frame and adds to the edgy material, which balances the thriller plot with social commentary about corruption, labor relations, and the lure of power. Schrader's later films show more subtlety and cinematic confidence, but time hasn't dimmed the power he unleashes in this angry working class drama. The DVD features commentary by Paul Schrader, his first such audio track, guided and prodded by critic Maitland McDonagh, who does her best to draw the director out of his long silences and launch him into his fascinating production stories. --Sean Axmaker
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Customer Reviews
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a sobering movie
Rating  (5)
Date: 2007-09-24
Well, I love Schrader and his moralistic style, to begin with. But anyway, Blue Collar has held up pretty well through the years, despite the changing face of the American workplace. It's a great movie, an American classic.
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Well directed and acted!
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-07-01
This is as real as real can get far as life on the assembly line in the Motor City went. Richard, Yaphett and Harvey along with the other actors in this movie did a superb job portraying the blue collar working men inside of the factory plants. The way corruption in the union was exposed was on point. This is definitely one of Richard Pryor's best films. It ranks in the top three in my book.
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Good to nearly the last drop
Rating  (4)
Date: 2007-05-21
I had heard good things about "Blue Collar" and the movie generally lived up to that praise. I was reminded how profane Richard Pryor was but I was also reminded that he had a special talent that his mimicers never did. I could handle it but I had to turn it down so that my wife and son couldn't hear the twelve letter words in the other room.
I liked the way the plot developed but I didn't care for the way it ended. We get the general layout through a series of scenes that show three men who work at an auto plant in Detroit. They are stressed at home financially, at work intellectually, and by their union frustratingly. One of the three gets an idea about how they could make a killing and stick it to their union at the same time. The plan backfires but an incriminating union ledger falls in their lap. They seek to cash in on the ledger.
"Blue Collar" gives a depressing look at assembly-line workers. Work is hard, pay is cheap and no one seems to understand their plight. However, I had been under the impression an auto worker's job was top of the line assembly line work. High pay and benefits are what I understand the job to be. Anyway, that isn't to say that life's not still a struggle for these guys but I felt I was asked to sympathize a bit too much with their economic circumstances. However, what left me really disappointed was the clumsy way the writer and director handled the possibilities of the union ledger. I thought a different direction on that subject could have made for a much improved movie. However, I felt that the writer and director took their characters and sacrificed our investment in them to make a political point that made for a weaker ending. I don't have to have a happy ending but I wanted something more than I got. It was fun along the way but the film ran out of gas at the end.
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...and may the greatest opportunist win...
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-01-02
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
A devastating, and great film, unfortunately more discussed than seen or known at this late date.
BLUE COLLAR is celebrated for a number of reasons - the casting is inspired, subverting a standard Hollywood racial casting formula, and director/writer Paul Schrader (his directorial debut; Schrader was already known for writing TAXI DRIVER) gets unforgettable performances from three leads who apparently didn't much care for each other. Richard Pryor's dramatic performance is oft-commented upon for a reason - his performance as Zeke is a tour-de-force; one of the great moments in recent (at least) American cinema. A dozen movies every year are blurbed as "unforgettable:" this one actually earns the term.
And it does so the old-fashioned way - Schrader builds drama very carefully, with methodical pacing, sharp and realistic dialogue, and a documentary-real glimpse of post-industrial decay as it creeps into everyone's day-to-day existances: dirty and raw, filled with unsolveable moral conundrums and a simmering rage over expectations shattered.
Schrader's story - which at first might seem to be just another indictment of "the system" or big business (or unions) having their way with the working class - manages instead to inch towards some darker ironies: that mythologized working class may not neccessarily be any more loyal, or moral, than the upper classes that are - in fact - brazenly shafting them - and as the film moves into it's latter half, this nasty paradox, fleshed out with off-the-cuff gallows humor that Pryor (and also Keitel and Kotto) supplies turns BLUE COLLAR into something gripping and desperate.
And alas - yet another irony of BLUE COLLAR would be it's general unavailability with the passage of time, as the film has lost (unfortunately) less of its' relevance than one would have hoped. A great film.
-David Alston
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Schrader's view on the American labour union tragedy
Rating (4)
Date: 2006-06-28
I have a strong interest in the sharp contrast between actors Robert De Niro (and director Martin Scorsese and writer/director Paul Schrader) on the one hand and Sylvester Stallone on the other hand in their portrayal of similar themes - Vietnam war veterans, boxing champs - and labour union corruption. In Rocky (1976), Stallone's character is asked: "Do you believe in the American dream?" and a hesitant Rocky finally wins the heavyweight bout - the American dream came true not only for this fairy-tale character but also for a struggling Stallone as he received Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay. But the film critic Schrader did not even receive an Oscar nomination in the same screenplay category for the critically acclaimed Taxi Driver (1976) that (in contrast with the Oscar Winner for Best Picture, Rocky) did not receive a single Academy Award. Taxi Driver represented the polar opposite of Rocky - De Niro embodying the American nightmare.
Two years later, in 1978, we not only see the release of two movies on Vietnam that share the Oscar awards among them (The Deer Hunter and Coming Home) but also the release of two movies on labour union corruption that resemble the divergence of viewpoints on the American dream for workers. Scriptwriters Stallone and Schrader once again presented completely different views on blue-collar anti-heroes. After Stallone rewrote Joe Ezsterhas's script, F.I.S.T. leader Johnny Kovac came closer to resembling icon Walter Reuther than thuggish Jimmy Hoffa (on whom Ezsterhas based his original script). If Stallone had his way with director Norman Jewison, Kovac would not have suffered the ignoble end that finally prevailed. But Schrader's Blue Collar comes perhaps closer to what Ezsterhas originally envisioned for his uneconomically long and commercially unfeasible movie script: a poignant tale of the tragedy of union labour corruption.
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