Raging Bull

1980 / USA / 129 minutes

Director:  Martin Scorsese
Screenplay:  Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin, based on the book Raging Bull:  My Story by Jake LaMotta, Joseph Carter and Peter Savage
Starring:  Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty and Joe Pesci
Genre:  Drama, sports

This film is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of the 1980s and one of the peaks of director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro's careers.  The film tells the true story of champion boxer Jake LaMotta (De Niro) following his career from a hungry up and coming prize fighter in the early 1940s to to a bloated nightclub entertainer in the 1960s.  It details how the violence and rage which made LaMotta such a feared and formidable opponent in the ring, affected his personal life and relationships, in particular with second wife Vicky (Moriarty) and his brother and manager Joey (Pesci), which were coloured by his obsessive rage, sexual jealousy, paranoia and self-destructive behaviour.

LaMotta is never a likeable individual, but he is fascinating and weirdly sympathetic thanks to the astonishing performance by De Niro, in which he attained peak physical form to play the young LaMotta (the real Jake LaMotta on whose autobiography the film is based and who served as an advisor for the film-makers commented that DeNiro was one of the twenty best middleweight boxers of all time). and then famously became hugely overweight to play the older LaMotta.

The film is shot in beautiful black and white with a brief colour sequence about halfway through the film.  Most of the film is shot in the gritty low-key style familiar from earlier Scorsese films, but the boxing scenes are spectacular choreographed and edited and stylishly shot.

A bleak, savage and uncompromising film, it is also a masterpiece.