Martin Scorsese's RAGING BULL is a ruthlessly unsympathetic portrait of a professional boxer's beatings in and out of the ring. Based on real life boxer Jake LaMotta's memoirs, by TAXI DRIVER screenwriter Paul Schrader, I rank this brilliant film alongside that other great character study of Scorsese's as one of the most powerful pieces of cinema ever made, with another mesmerising performance from Robert De Niro, from an insanely paranoid taxi driver to an insanely paranoid boxer.
The film starts in the 1960s with Jake LaMotta, fat and bloated ex-Middleweight champion of the world, practising his night-club act, reciting Marlon Brando's famous ON THE WATERFRONT speech, "I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody." It then flashes back to the 1940s when the violent world of boxing as a professional sport is at its most competitive time in history. All over America mafia's are having the ultimate say of who falls and who stays standing at the last bell, a concept that doesn't go down well with a younger, fighting-fit Jake LaMotta's high protein meals as he relentlessly rises towards the Championship. LaMotta is in the midst of an abusive marriage with his wife when one day he meets a beautiful young girl, Vickie, and, completely smitten, divorces his wife to marry her. Their romance soon turns sour, however, when the increasingly paranoid boxer wrongly accuses her and his brother, who manages him, of having an affair. Channeling his rage into the ring he goes on to win the Championship, only to lose it to his famous rival, boxing legend Sugar Ray Robinson, and as the collapse of his boxing career coincides with that of his personal life, alienated from both his wife and his brother, things takes a somewhat ironic turn as the self-destructive ex-champion finds himself fighting again, this time for his own personal redemption.
RAGING BULL is an exemplary production. Hauntingly scored and filmed with the most stunning black and white footage I have ever seen recorded from TAXI DRIVER cinematographer Michael Chapman, I found it often difficult to watch in comfort, so harsh an emotional experience it was, lingering with me long after the film had finished. The acting throughout is wonderful, from De Niro and Joe Pesci outdoing one another as the boxer and his brother, to Cathy Moriarty as the boxer's sublimely beautiful second wife, and as with TAXI DRIVER I could only sit in wonder at Scorsese's masterful direction, the brutal fight scenes, in particular, simply beautiful, poetically mirroring the troubled boxer's personal fight with himself. A masterpiece.
RAGING BULL won two Acadamy Awards, for Best Actor (Robert De Niro) and Best Film Editing (Thelma Schoonmaker).
(A film-only review; not to be associated with the format it comes on, available bonus features or plastic bits that may or may not be attached to the casing.)
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Scorsese directing De Niro
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The high-point in the long fruitful partnership of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, and ... more
widely reckoned one of the finest films of the 1980s,Raging Bullstill looks like a contender. Based on the ghosted autobiography of 1940s boxing champion Jake La...
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The high-point in the long fruitful partnership of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, and ... more
widely reckoned one of the finest films of the 1980s,Raging Bullstill looks like a contender. Based on the ghosted autobiography of 1940s boxing champion Jake La...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
Raging Bull is arguably the finest work from the Scorsese and De Niro partnership. De Niro ... more
gives an amazing portrayal of a man whose animal side lurks just beneath the surface ever ready to erupt. Vivid and unremitting in its uncompromising brutality ...
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Raging Bull is arguably the finest work from the Scorsese and De Niro partnership. De Niro ... more
gives an amazing portrayal of a man whose animal side lurks just beneath the surface, every ready to erupt. Vivid and unremitting in its uncompromising brutality...
Advantages: Acting is amazing, especially De Niro and the whole thing looks gorgeous. Disadvantages: Some may be put off by the violence or the lack of a character to root for.
Syklone 15.08.2009 (15.08.2009)
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Review of Raging Bull (DVD)
Advantages: Acting is amazing, especially De Niro and the whole thing looks gorgeous. Disadvantages: Some may be put off by the violence or the lack of a character to root for.
Syklone 15.08.2009 (15.08.2009)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful
Review of Raging Bull (DVD)
![Raging Bull (Wide Screen) [DVD] [1981]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/78546580.jpg "Raging Bull (Wide Screen) [DVD] [1981]")
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