Raging Bull (1980)
Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Cathy Moriarty; d. Martin Scorsese; A+

I hate sports. With all of my heart, I detest them. The only ones I can even stand to watch are figure skating, gymnastics (rarely), skiing, snowboarding, and speed skating. Anything else, especially the "mainstream" sports (y'know, basketball, baseball, football, boxing...), is not on my "to watch list." And it's something short of a miracle (well that's overexaggerating it of course) if I actually love a movie that's based on one of these sports. Now, when I watched Raging Bull for the first time, it had two things going against it: Boxing, and The Hurricane, another movie based on a real-life boxer, a movie that I loathed. Ignore the fact that it stared two of my favorite actors and was directed by one of my favorite directors. So as expected, when I first watched it, I wasn't too enthusiastic. It reminded me too much of that saccarine-coated peice of... and, of course, the boxing. But like so many other movies before it (more recently Scorsese's own Cape Fear), I began to think back about it, and discovered that I might have liked Raging Bull after all. So, with persuesion of a friend, and myself, I watched it again. What a surprised, I did love it after all.

Raging Bull is the true story of middleweight boxer Jake LaMotta (played by Oscar-winner Robert De Niro), who is potrayed in this movie as a violent, jealous, and paranoid man. The victims of such rage are usually his brother Joey (Joe Pesci), his wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty), and his boxing opponets, who are like stress toys to him. Throught out the movie, LaMotta consitantly interrogates Joey and Vickie on several things, but specifically infedelity. If he doesn't get the answer he wants, he turns violent, and if he does, he still becomes violent. Eventually his irrational behavior drives Vickie and Joey away and leaves him alone as a rather pathetic, out of shape character who results to a cheesy stand-up routine to pay the bills.

Since I have not seen that many boxing films I guess I can easily say that Raging Bull is the best boxing film I've ever seen, and maybe even the best sports-related film I've ever seen. There virtually is not a single flaw in this film, from its stunning black and white photography, to the amazing performances from De Niro, Pesci, and Moriarty, to the script, to, of course, the expert direction of Scorsese. I know jack about Jake LaMotta, in fact I've only seen him just recently in a documentary about boxing films on AMC. But from what I've heard, the script and De Niro were dead on in the potrayal of LaMotta. Whether or not this is true, it doesn't matter, because even as someone who was uneducated about LaMotta, I still found De Niro's performance to be amazing. Even though I still prefer his performance in Taxi Driver, I admit he diserved his Oscar. Joe Pesci also gives another great performance as Jake's brother. Sure, he may be playing the same obnoxious, short tough guy role I've seen him in with other Scorsese films (Goodfellas, Casino), but he manages to play them so well everytime. This was his first film with Scorsese.

The camera is as much as the star of this film as De Niro. Editor Thelma Schoonmaker won for Best Editing, and it is well diserved. The boxing scenes are some of the best in cinema history, and this is where the editing shines, as well as the direction and cinematography. And in spite of the black and white photography, which is superb, the film still has a realistic look and feel. The boxing scenes are as violent and difficult to watch as in any scenes of voilence in any Scorsese film. However, it is nice to know that anyone who was covered with blood, or in one case, showered in blood in this movie were covered with the sweet substance known as Hershey's chocolate syrup (this same tactic was used in Hitchcock's Psycho). On a first viewing I dismissed them as boring boxing scenes, but on second veiwing and now in retrospect I see them as much more. They aren't simplistic boxing scenes, as there is a bevy of camera and sound tricks that make them all seem unreal. So I was able to enjoy them as cinematic masterpeices instead of mere boxing scenes. Other technical things that I find interesting about this film is the hightened use of slow-motion. This is typically used when LaMotta is watching Vickie, especially things involving Vickie that anger him.

What I find very interesting about this film is that it doesn't try to paint LaMotta as the tragic all-American hero. This is what ruins many sports-related films for me. There is no depth of the characters, which results in no depth in the movie. Scorsese, De Niro, Schrader, and Martin took their subject as is and ran with it, resulting in very rich, complex character study.

I think this is definatley not a film to be missed. Boxing fans, sports fans, film fans, anybody, you should see this film regardless of who you are and what you like. ,BR>
© Vert A Go Go Reviews 2001