In the more ambitious Hoffa, Nicholson plays the Detroit street fighter who rose from the ranks of trucker and labor organizer to build the Teamsters into the nation's most powerful union. The boldness of director Danny DeVito's violent epic is matched by Nicholson's astonishing physical and vocal transformation into Jimmy Hoffa. The changeover might constrict another actor. Not Nicholson.

And not writer David Mamet, who dares a sympathetic portrait of the bluecollar battler whom most people…