With RAGING BULL, Martin Scorsese's personal approach to filmmaking is taken to a whole new level. Shooting in a crisp black and white, Scorsese tells the story of middleweight boxer Jake La Motta, played with incredible intensity by Robert De Niro, in an Oscar-winning performance. As La Motta rises through the ranks to earn his first shot at the middleweight crown, he falls in love with Vickie (Cathy Moriarty), a gorgeous girl from his Bronx neighbourhood. Jake's inability to express his feelings pours out in the ring and eventually takes over his life in his dealings with his brother, Joey (a brilliant Joe Pesci). Irrational jealousy over Vickie, as well as an insatiable appetite, sends him into a downward spiral that costs him his title, his wife, and his relationship with Joey. As the out-of-control fighter, De Niro delivers one of the screen's most unforgettable performances. Pesci is just as intense as Joey, who finally realises that he is unable to tame his animalistic brother.
Scorsese and cinematographer Michael Chapman shoot the film with a stylish flair that fills the boxing scenes with boundless energy and adds immediacy to the endless arguments that erupt whenever Jake is outside the ring. Coupled with Thelma Schoonmaker's breakneck editing and the film's audacious sound design, said scenes are the most brutally realistic depiction of the sport the cinema has ever seen. Simply put, RAGING BULL is one of American cinema's masterworks.
Critics and film-makers are always being asked to reel off their desert island films: Raging Bull, without question, is one such great. Director Martin Scorsese makes no concession to character likeability as he portrays Jake La Motta's downward slide from arrogant prizefighter to frustrated, hateful dropout. Robert De Niro, who piled on the pounds to play the latter-day La Motta, proves he is the ultimate Method actor, both utterly convincing in the ring (the brutal fight sequences are spectacularly staged) and as the empty barrel abusing everyone (including his wife, Cathy Moriarty, and brother, Joe Pesci) at home. Scorsese effortlessly fuses top-drawer acting (De Niro rightly won a best actor Oscar for his efforts), pumping narrative drive and blitzkrieg camera technique to deliver a giddy, claustrophobic classic.
New York Times
"RAGING BULL is not simply the greatest boxing movie ever made; Martin Scorsese's 1980 masterpiece is arguably the finest American film released in [that] decade..."
Halliwell's Film Guide
Tough, compelling, powerfully made ringside melodrama. A poll of American critics voted it the best movie of the 1980s.
Radio Times
Halliwell's Film Guide
