Danny DeVito directs Jack Nicholson, himself and J.T. Walsh in this biopic of the doomed teamster leader’s life. 

God only knows what 13 year old Bobby Carroll made of this when he first watched it in 1993. Adult, well versed in US history and Jack Nicholson fan Bobby Carroll had to sit on his own hand this week. I had to do it to stop myself from continually reaching for my phone to distract me from all the unfocused turgidness. DeVito tries every visual trick in the book to propel the story along. We get cartoonish match cut after match cut, hauntingly fake studio bound exteriors and prosthetic make-up that is better suited to a Batman movie (The Joker meet The Penguin). But all that can’t hide that this lengthy borer fails to reveal much about the important eponymous subject as it rushes through the headlines of his life. There’s a man’s life hidden in all this barking incident.

4