That Moment In ‘F.I.S.T.’ When Sylvester Stallone Gives THE Speech

F.I.S.T. is a 1978 crime drama and critical favorite that proved the star of a boxing movie had even more punch in him.

THE STORY: Loosely inspired by Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa, F.I.S.T. (that stands for Federation of Inter-State Truckers you wiseacre, navel gazing looky-loos), tells the story of two friends, Johnny Kovak (Sylvester Stallone in his follow-up to the Academy Award winning ‘Rocky’) and Abe Belkin (understated and brilliant David Huffman) coming up together in the rough and tumble blue collar world of Cleveland, Ohio during the Great Depression when big business was more than happy to take advantage of the Working Man. As downtrodden warehouse workers, Kovak – the brawn – and Belkin – the brains – decide to break free from their fourteen hour underpaid work days and, under the tutelage of kindly F.I.S.T. Labor Union organizer Mike Monahan (Richard Hurd), make a stab at providing the local truckers and dock workers with a better way of life. In an era where Labor Unions were almost universally despised by monstrous companies and eyed suspiciously by workers afraid of losing their jobs, the two men have their work cut out for them. With a grim and gritty first-half that somehow manages to pull off a dark fairy tale quality and a lackluster final act that fails miserably, F.I.S.T. is the type of film Hollywood rarely makes any more; a generations spanning epic that grasps for the fabled Brass Ring and that asks some big questions and every now and again provides one or two answers.

THE RUNDOWN: A lot was riding on Sylvester Stallone’s follow-up film to his universally praised Cinderella story, Rocky. The man – still looked at by an adoring public as an actor of Marlon Brando-like chops and not yet reduced to a caricature in a seemingly unending string of forgettable flops (Rhinestone Cowboy, anyone?) – could pretty much take his pick of projects floating around late 1970s Hollywood. It is because of this carte blanche that it is even more remarkable that he chose F.I.S.T. The film did not necessarily scream blockbuster in an era that was just beginning to embrace the concept of the Summer Movie or the Tent-Pole Franchise. What it did boast was a smart script by up and coming screenwriter Joe Eszterhas and a respected director, Norman Jewison. It was with this pedigree that Stallone decided to hitch his wagon and embark on what would arguably be one of his most nuanced and well sketched in performances as innocent turned corrupt Union leader, Johnny Kovak.

The first half of the film, set in 1930s and 1940s Cleveland, plays like gangbusters and sets up the classic archetypal story of a ground level Union organizer, Johnny Kovak, who makes a deal with the devil (in this particular scenario the devil being the Mafia) in order to better the lives of the working men who are treated as disposable commodities versus actual human beings by Big Business. Kovak is not without allies before the local crime element takes an interest in him: Abe Belkin, his best friend, rises with him through the ranks of F.I.S.T., Mike Monahan, the organizer for F.I.S.T. who recruits the two warehouse workers and becomes something akin to a surrogate father to Johnny, and Anna Zarinka (the sublime and underused Melinda Dillon), a love interest who eventually becomes his wife. This fine ensemble of actors puts a spring in Stallone’s acting and it’s a shame that they are not used more wisely in the last half of the movie.

Which brings us to the most jarring thing about F.I.S.T. The film shifts halfway through from the storybook quality that the 30s and 40s era lends it, to a cold and joyless 1950s-1960s world where, by then, Stallone’s character is almost hopelessly corrupt and irredeemable. It’s a transition that never really works and leaves one questioning if the first half of the film were nothing more than a sweet promise of a great movie that never comes to fruition.

THAT MOMENT: Mike Monahan, the sage old Irish man who Johnny took closest to his heart, is killed during a strike at Consolidated Trucking. Up until his death, one gets the sense that Kovak has one foot in, one foot out of the Union. He enjoys what little prestige it gives him; a company car that he can squire Anna off to a date in, the small commissions he makes whenever he and Abe signs a man up to the Federation and the ability to affect some form of change, albeit small. With the death of his mentor, something pivots in Kovak and F.I.S.T. becomes not just a temporary venture but his very being and overwhelming passion. After Mike’s death, the local chapter of F.I.S.T. is in danger of falling apart, the morale of the members being at an all-time low. It’s at this low ebb when Organized Crime stooge Vince Doyle (Kevin Conway at his nefarious best) infiltrates the group, promising “muscle” to finish the fight with Consolidated Trucking and, in turn, winning a better deal for the men employed there. It’s a Faustian bargain and Kovak enters into it weary but determined that he can have his cake and eat it too. There remains only one last thing he needs do to finish this fight.

The showstopper for the movie ‘F.I.S.T.’ is in the very heated and crafty monologue that Johnny Kovak delivers to the men of his local. It’s a perfect moment of synchronicity between character and actor: Much like Kovak has to deliver a stirring speech to galvanize his men for one last battle, one gets the sense that actor Sylvester Stallone is also going into this fiery moment with something to prove to his critics who were skeptical of ‘Rocky’ being anything other than a fluke for the actor. The Union hall as filmed in this pivotal sequence looks hot and muggy, something almost out of Dante’s Inferno, which puts everyone that much more on edge and seems to belay just how crucial the speech Johnny Kovak is about give. It’s even more crucial because the men of ‘F.I.S.T.’ are not entirely on board with going back to Consolidated Trucking. They know that if they do it will mean more violence and bloodshed. The tension in the air is almost palpable.

In the film’s most remarkable moment, with everything riding on what comes out of his mouth, Johnny Kovak and Sylvester Stallone become one; the actor as the vessel and the vessel as cathartic mouthpiece.

“Alright, I just want to say one thing…We’re going to go back out there, they’re not going to beat us down no more, they’re not going to burn us down no more…They’re not going to shoot us down no more; because if they do, we’re gonna do what Mike did: We’re coming at ‘em with everything we got! I’m sayin’ to Consolidated right now, if we gotta do anymore burying in the graveyard, they better get out their shovels, because we’re through takin’ punches…You see what this says (gesturing to a F.I.S.T. banner directly behind him)? This ain’t a bunch of letters like any other Union: It says F.I.S.T.! And that’s what we are, every guy in here, a fist! One fist!”

WHY IT MATTERS: The men get caught up in Kovak’s heated declaration and we, as the audience, do too. It’s a powerful and singular moment in a film that serves both as its triumphant centerpiece and a very high bar that, try as the film might, it can never surpass again. But what comes after hardly matters as the riveting first half of Norman Jewison’s film seems to exist in its own separate universe and movie, one where, long after the last depressing reel of the final film we have long known and perplexed over has unspooled, it has created a life all its own that is of and yet forever apart from the failed aspirations that immediately followed the final breakup of Belkin and Kovak. Somewhere in an alternate universe where all film lives and is a real and vital thing, Johnny Kovak and Abe Belkin continue an alternate story forever enmeshed in the mythical and hazy Union world of the 1930s that is filled with dark candy for everyone. I can hardly wait to see the rest of that movie.