Don't believe the hype

Rating: 5/10 (4 August 2017)

I don't write reviews on IMDb very often, but this particular movie baffles me. How is this in the IMDb Top 250? The only positives I have are that it's well shot and does an excellent job portraying what it's like to be in the same room as a group of people with nothing good to say about each other. The acting is solid all around but nothing groundbreaking. Joe Pesci played Joe Pesci. I didn't find Robert Deniro's performance that amazing; yes he gained 60 pounds to play the retired LaMotta, but besides a lot of yelling, nothing about this universally lauded performance stood out to me. Speaking of yelling, about 70% of the movie is comprised of angry people yelling at each other. I guess all the characters are supposed to be unhappy, but that doesn't mean they all have to be unlikable. There's no reason to care about any of the characters since we hardly get to know them. Maybe the fact that a more relatable side of the characters is never displayed is part of what the film is going for thematically, but the presentation could have been a lot better. For these reasons, I found Raging Bull mostly boring and somewhat exhausting to sit through. I've at least liked every other Martin Scorsese film I've seen, but this one left me unsatisfied and with a sour taste in my mouth.