Review
Raging Bull
- Director
- Martin Scorsese
- Year
- 1980
- Rating
- Reviewed by
- José Ruiloba a.k.a. Morris
- Review date
- Tuesday, August 07, 2001
Jake La Motta (Robert De Niro) was a middle-weight boxer whose biggest battle wasn’t inside the ring, but with himself. Raging Bull tells the story of his rise and fall. It also depicts his life along his wife (Cathy Moriarty), his brother (Joe Pesci), and ultimately, his temperament.
Biographies are always a hard task to bring to the big screen. Some are filled with sappy melodrama, others just can’t attach with the viewer. So the fact that a bio about such a repellent man could achieve such greatness and be so compelling should be credited to the collaboration between director Martin Scorsese, actor Robert De Niro, and scribes Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin.
The movie is a meticulous character study of an unappealing man who led himself to his own destruction. Always impulsive, jealous, egoistic, he was a rather complex man. And his life was fascinating. The movie shows it all with great attention to detail and character development.
It also helps that Raging Bull is one of the best crafted motion pictures ever. Shot in beautiful black and white, it contains some of the most harrowing boxing matches ever committed to celluloid. That’s what editing is all about! Besides, it all moves at a nice pace even though it is a difficult movie to digest. And it contains a memorable segment at the middle that shows extracts from Jake’s life using color home videos intertwined with his victories at the ring.
Robert De Niro won a well-deserved Oscar for his outstanding portrayal of this man. There’s always an underlying sense of pity and sadness beyond his acting that pays off admirably to make a better portrait of what Jake was all about. He also went through one of the most impressive physical transformations an actor has ever done to portray a character accurately. His fat persona is unbelievably shocking.
Lending great support are Cathy Moriarty, as Jake’s fragile yet strong wife who, like many women, get attached to a man who is not worthy of her and who gives her quite a hard time along the way. Joe Pesci is also a standout in a role that fits him perfectly and makes a great counterpart to De Niro’s Jake.
Raging Bull is, without any doubt, one of the best movies of the 80’s. It feels like something completely different and represents a remarkable achievement in every aspect!
“You didn't get me down, Ray.”
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Other reviews of Raging Bull (1980): Groucho
Comments
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Groucho wrote at 6/22/2002:
I so love this movie! I remember how marveled I was at first by its beauty, especially in that segment showing home-videos in color. Man, what poignancy! This is a terribly beautiful movie about a horrible man, that's the secret of its success!