Big and portentous, Hoffa feels like a series of acting exercises inflated to epic proportions. But as a portrait of unionism's most controversial figure, it offers only flickering illumination.

Hoffa, with its jaundiced script and a director wedded to his rose-tinted spectacles, is a mess, with only the sterling truculence of Nicholson's performance to mitigate it.

Hoffa shows DeVito as a genuine filmmaker. Here is a movie that finds the right look and tone for its material. Not many directors would have been confident enough to simply show us Jimmy Hoffa instead of telling us all about him.

With Jack Nicholson as the star and playwright David Mamet writing the script, Hoffa sounds unbeatable. But the movie is a major disappointment.