Blue Collar
Directed by Paul Schrader
Written by Paul and Leonard Schrader; source material Sydney A. Glass
1978/US
IMDb page
First viewing; Amazon Prime rental
Smokey James: Why do you go to the line every Friday?
Jerry Bartowski: Well…
Smokey James: Because the finance man’s gonna be at your house on Saturday, right? That’s exactly what the company wants – to keep you on their line. They’ll do anything to keep you on their line. They pit the lifers against the new boys, the old against the young, the black against the white – EVERYBODY to keep us in our place.
This movie was just not for me.
Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto are assembly line workers in an auto plant. They are all family men who are barely scraping by. Their union seems to be in the pocket of management. They decide that robbing the union office is the thing to do but collect only about $600. But the union is claiming $10,000 from the insurance company. Now, the men are in a position to blackmail the union, or so they think.
Despite its high IMDb user rating, this movie didn’t grab me. The vibe is very 70’s with lots and lots of cursing and corrupt authority figures. Richard Pryor plays a dramatic role where he can pour out a lot of rage. It was reportedly a very unhappy set. Anyway, the movie lost me in the very beginning and never regained my attention.
