Blue Collar Review

Paul Schrader, the writer of Taxi Driver, turns a creatively jaundiced eye over life on the production line in his directorial debut. Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto work in a Detroit car plant and get a very poor deal from both their bosses and their corrupt union reps. Deciding to pull a robbery on the latter, a connection with organised crime means that they're immediately way out of their depth. Some great foul-mouthed dialogue to rival Scarface and a fine sense of dead-end lives on the edge of poverty, this works both as unrelenting drama and as black comedy.