Scorsese's Anti-Rocky.

Rating: 9/10 (26 July 2017)

Considered by many as Scorsese's finest film and even as one of the greatest films of all time, this autobiography of the pugilist Jake LaMotta (played by De Niro with utmost intensity) was not about his fights inside the ring but inside his paranoid, inarticulate, and jealous mind. After a disappointing turn in their last film together that almost ended the director's life, the one-two punch duo of star and director returned in the screen with force and bravura, earning Scorsese his first Oscar nomination for Best Director and De Niro his second Oscar win.
One of the many reasons this film worked is because the themes that Scorsese had dealt with in his more personal films are present here, blending his style with a brilliant black-and-white photography from Michael Chapman, and Schoonmaker's Oscar winning work in the editing room.
"Raging Bull" is the anti-Rocky, although Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff who both produced the uplifting boxing saga re-united here, in a bleak high contrast black-and-white film about a former contender who ends up as a bloated washed-up nightclub owner.