Review of Raging Bull (1980) by Siamak Z — 06 Jan 2012

Jake LaMotta. His name reverberates throughout the film, and what a film it is. It proves one thing: noir + Scorsese = brilliance.

The history of boxing films is pretty much evident when you watch better-than-average pictures of its genre, and we can somehow or rather make out the features of how a film of this genre should look like. Raging Bull is the opposite of what boxing films are, quintessentially. Where boxing films glorify fighting as a way to make a stand on something, Martin Scorsese blood-spurting biopic relishes the challenge of providing a true, brutal, honest tale of a boxer gone rogue.

De Niro, by all means, is a fine actor when it comes to sharp, relentless, unforgiving drama. He mutters his lines like he means it, like he was born to be menacing. We love him, especially as LaMotta. The thing is, it is all too simple (but not necessarily easy) for De Niro to fit into his role with ease. LaMotta, like De Niro?s characters in Goodfellas or The Godfather, has the personality of a rock, the uncompromising attitude of a gladiator in the ring and the paranoia that eventually deserts his loved ones.

Is it the screenplay or Scorsese?s direction that holds the film together? Both, obviously. The plot is chronicled from the start of LaMotta?s boxing career until the very end. It is the 1930?s or 40?s when it all starts for him, and he is just beginning to rise. He has a rough relationship with his wife. He eventually meets and marries a young lady by the name of Vickie (Cathy Moriarty). Together with his brother, Joey (Joe Pesci), the film displays his rise and rise as a middleweight boxer. This is done well through wonderfully edited pictures (some in slow-motion gore) and they provide for excellent story-telling cinematography.

But, of course, all good things come to an end. LaMotta suffers his first lost, becomes champion and then loses his title for good. To make it worse, his strained relationship with Vickie becomes even more so, due to his constant paranoia that his wife is cheating on him. He also loses his cool with Joey, whom he suspects is sleeping with Vickie. If LaMotta?s rise to stardom had been spirited, his fall was a I-told-you-us tragedy. Some of the parts are vaguely described, but once we watch the scenes depicting LaMotta?s transformation from a hero to an overweight zero, there is a realization that the movie was never about learning to be a better person than LaMotta ever was. Like I said, the film skips the quirks that make a boxing film a boxing film. It is more like a hybrid of boxing and biography, with De Niro as the class act.

Yes, the film is not only about De Niro. The supporting cast do not exactly give outstanding performances, save for Pesci. He is meant to be a one-dimensional character, always having tête à tête conversations with LaMotta to advise him to do the right thing. Pesci is not as sharp as De Niro, but he is more driven, and more frightening at times.

As the movie enters its final stages, LaMotta himself begins to fade away. We might call the film up to this point ?gripping?, but that shouldn?t describe the entire film aptly. We could call it as it is, about a Raging Bull, who cares for no one but himself, in his ever irrational, erratic anger. I guess the (only) thing that makes the film akin to the ordinary boxing film is that it does tell us something in the end: there is a Raging Bull in even the best of us, but we do not realize it until we bear the full brunt of it.

Personally*? Burt Reynolds, Joe Pesci and Danny DeVito look almost the same?