Cockfighter
By Kit Macdonald
Adapted from Charles Willeford’s novel, Cockfighter is a rough-edged, uncompromising study of obsession, masculinity and self-annihilation that stars a severe Warren Oates as Frank Mansfield, a Southern cockfighter who takes a vow of silence until he wins the championship belt. Mansfield's self-imposed muteness puts him in a state of existence that revolves almost entirely around action, ritual and endurance, and his obsession with an unjustifiable and apparently inescapable pursuit.
Aside from Oates, Cockfighter features a stellar ensemble cast of the best Hollywood character actors of the day, including Harry Dean Stanton as the ruthless and taunting rival cockfighter Omar Baradansky, and Millie Perkins as Dody, the woman emotionally entangled with Mansfield, who offers one of the film’s few points of vulnerability and human warmth. The ensemble brilliantly carries through and fleshes out Hellman’s exploration of this marginal community and its deeply damaged men.