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Raging Bull
Middleweight boxer Jake LaMotta battles both inner-demons and arch-rivals in his quest for world championship glory. Intense drama from Martin Scorsese starring Robert De Niro
When critics came to choose their film of the 1980s, many rewound to the very beginning of the decade and selected Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull. There are some who consider it blasphemous to say anything negative about the epic biopic and there's no disputing the movie's magnificence. Yet the standards of Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader are so high that it's hard to argue that Raging Bull represents the very best of either man's work. For those who haven't gone 15 rounds with the picture, Raging Bull stars Robert De Niro as middleweight boxer Jake LaMotta. Pound-for-pound one of the hardest fighters on the planet, LaMotta longs to win the world championship. But the combination of his violent temper, his Mafia connections and his all-consuming rivalry with Sugar Ray Robinson (Barnes) threatens to dent Jake's dreams. And if things weren't tough enough in the ring, when Jake takes his gloves off, it spells bad news for his brother Joey (Pesci) and his young bride Vickie (Moriarty). Raging Bull was shot almost entirely in crisp black-and-white by Scorsese's then cameraman of choice Michael Chapman (Taxi Driver, The Last Waltz). The other immediately arresting aspect of the film is Robert De Niro's powerhouse performance. The Oscar-winner demands our attention every moment he's on screen, whether he's pulling punches or throwing out punch-lines. If only LaMotta the ring warrior and his alter ego Jake, the jaded, jowly nightclub entertainer, had even the slightest hint of a redeeming feature (the film spans the years 1941-1964). As it is, the ease with which one can admire De Niro's monstrous creation is off-set by the impossibility of empathising with LaMotta. The fuss over De Niro's gut-busting turn has also obscured Raging Bull's other great performances. Cathy Moriarty - who was only 20 at the time of filming - is superb as the woman with the misfortune to be married to LaMotta. Indeed, such is the effortlessness of her performance that you can't help wondering where her career might have taken her had an injury in a road accident not put things on hold. As for Joe Pesci's performance as Joey LaMotta, it's so impressive you can only speculate why it took another nine years for him to become a bona fide star. With great supporting work from Frank Vincent and Nicholas Colasanto (Coach from 'Cheers') and a superb Robbie Robertson-supervised soundtrack, Raging Bull oozes class. So why doesn't the film deserve the same praise as Taxi Driver? A big part of the problem is the wretchedness of the central character. While Schrader and Scorsese's interest in grossly flawed men is well established, it's hard to figure out quite what it was about LaMotta's tale of blow-ups and wife-beating that made the pair think it was worth turning into a movie. Then there are the stylish fight sequences. Regarded by some as the strongest aspect of the film, the fact remains that Raging Bull's boxing scenes bear about as much relationship to real in-ring action as the slamming-and-banging action of the Rocky movies - only here the ring work seems even more jarring because of Scorsese's overall commitment to realism. Of course, there are those for whom slamming Raging Bull for its boxing sequences is like taking issue with Psycho over its shower scene. Love them, loathe them - it's all a matter of taste. But no matter where you believe Raging Bull belongs in the Scorsese canon, it's hard to argue that the 1980s delivered another knockout as convincing as this. Verdict Among the greatest films of the 1980s, but not Scorsese's best. |
