Overall Rating
  Awesome: 81.63%
Worth A Look: 7.48%
Average: 8.84%
Pretty Bad: 0.68%
Total Crap: 1.36%
4 reviews, 123 user ratings
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| Raging Bull |
by Greg Muskewitz
"Call him Vesuvius."
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Martin Scorsese reaches back for this black-and-white biopic paying homage to former boxer-cum-night club owner and amateur comedian Jake La Motta.(Played by Scorsese buddy De Niro again, although less redoubtably than Bickle, certainly De Niro was just as respectable.) A quick preface of the tumescent La Motta rehearsing his stand-up act in 1964 proceeds the rewinding to the beginning of his rise and fall in the ring in 1941. More imperative than his ins and outs of boxing, the film takes a deeper interest in the domestic pitfalls of La Motta, trading back and forth and even combining his puppetry of his brother (another Scorsese fave, Joe Pesci) and his second wife (Cathy Moriarty). Don’t let me lead you to believe that the in-the-ring business is minimized to a quick summary (though it is reduced to the occasional clunky montage), but it does take a second step, a second billing. His harshest tribulations in that arena begin with a long-running feud between Sugar Ray and himself, expanding out to La Motta’s difficulty in getting a title shot in his middle weight division, and his abstinence of outside help and management. His married life and relationship with his brother are tumultuous to begin with, but what is represented as a gradual dissension is likely a mere aperçu of elements that had been long brewing in the deterioration; the emotions were much farther along in that round than what was orally expressed. Also a 1980 release, De Niro’s La Motta was something of an elephant man, specifically with the battered, flattened prosthetic nose (not to misken the much-publicized weight-gain that De Niro went through, surely far more difficult than Gwyneth Paltrow’s fat suit in Shallow Hal), but additionally, when it came Oscar time (both films are/were gloriously shot in black-and-white, though Freddie Francis’ work in The Elephant Man was far superior), it was De Niro’s elephant man against John Hurt’s elephant man; Hurt was unfairly KOed, but De Niro’s magnificence was incontestable. (Further strange experiences during my viewing of Raging Bull: Jake at the end now seems to distantly but eerily resemble what Albert Brooks looks like today—which was later a surprise to find him in Taxi Driver—and Cathy Moriarty (just as hard to swallow as a 15-year-old as Foster was as 12) looking classy despite her milieu, had her name temporarily elude me upon her first appearance on-screen, instead recalling Cybill Shepherd’s—also shocking to find in Taxi Driver later (in my viewing experience), when this was actually made after.) Better than De Niro was Pesci, high and low, whose complicity and no-b.s. attitude outrank and out-perform De Niro’s irascibility. Pesci packs a wallop of energy and realism while maintaining his standard of unadulterated ‘hardass shitheel.’ Moriarty is an interesting choice as the female lead, not because she isn’t capable—a case that isn’t true—but because while some of her looks symmetrically fit into the period, her own mannerisms, mostly her voice, separate her distinctly from the average pack. The camerawork may not equal Francis’ in The Elephant Man, but it still knows how to move around and make good use of the interior of the ring, even if the rest of the expositions blur banally.
Watch closely at a dinner scene for John Turturro, who appears quickly without any lines. With Frank Vincent and Nicolas Colasanto.Final Verdict: B+.
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link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=2396&reviewer=172
originally posted: 11/10/01 05:15:11
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USA
14-Nov-1980 (R)
DVD: 08-Feb-2005
UK
N/A (18)
Australia
N/A (M)
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