Trailer
Plot summary
In 1935, Jimmy Hoffa climbs into a parked truck and hands driver Bobby Ciaro a card with instructions to give him whatever he needs. Ciaro is there when Hoffa works the trucking firms and laundries around Detroit, urging drivers to join the Teamsters. Hoffa lets slip that he already approached Ciaro, and Ciaro loses his job; he comes after Hoffa with a knife until Billy Flynn, Hoffa's bodyguard, forces him to back off. Ciaro then takes Flynn's place at Hoffa's side. When a Teamsters strike against non-union workers breaks into a street fight, men working for a Detroit mob boss carry Hoffa off. Ciaro steps in, and a bargain is made.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hoffa (1992)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Director Danny DeVito personally secured Hoffa's $50 million budget by giving up his own salary and signing on as a co-guarantor of the film's financing.
- Jack Nicholson blamed Hoffa's disappointing box office on Columbia Pictures' decision to schedule his other film, A Few Good Men, for the very same release date.
- Nicholson's performance sharply divided critics: he was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama at the 50th Golden Globes and for the Golden Raspberry for Worst Actor, for this film and Man Trouble, at the 13th Razzies.
- Jack Nicholson was hired to play Hoffa after Kevin Spacey, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro also auditioned; Pacino and De Niro went on to co-star in Martin Scorsese's 2019 film The Irishman, with Pacino playing Hoffa.
SPOILER
The film sends Hoffa to an isolated diner with a bodyguard, but his real last known sighting was at the Machus Red Fox, an upscale restaurant in the affluent Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills, where he had arranged a meeting with Tony Provenzano and Tony Giacalone.- Hoffa's son, James P. Hoffa, praised the film for its heroic portrayal of his father, but was critical of the portrayal of him as "an angry bear."
- Barry Levinson was the frontrunner to direct Hoffa ahead of Oliver Stone and John McTiernan, but he dropped out after screenwriter David Mamet refused to revise the script.
