Raging Bull Review

Rating: 10/10 (5 February 2014)

Raging Bull is the movie adaptation of the famous boxer Jake La Motta's memoir titled Raging Bull: My Story (1980). Starring as Jake La Motta, the Raging Bull, is Robert De Niro, with Joe Pesci as his brother Joey, Cathy Moriarty as his second wife Vickie La Motta, and Frank Vincent as Salvy, the wiseguy friend of Joey.
Raging Bull is a fast paced movie of which its plot is easily identifiable as a focus on the life of famous boxer Jake La Motta. This movie was set in urban New York City and chronicles the personal and boxing life of Jake La Motta from the 1940's thru 1964. The complexities of Jake La Motta's real life character served as the theme for Raging Bull. In the movie, Jake La Motta was a driven man of Italian descent with strong family values, a desire to stay away from the criminal element, an excellent boxer, and stubborn man. Jake came to learn that no matter how great of a boxer he was, his success was limited by forces other than his abilities and his boxing opponents. The same forces that limited his boxing achievements also impacted his personal life.
In the movie there was a clear parallel between Jake's boxing life and his personal life. Jake's brother Joey served as the link between the two parallels. Further, Joey served as the impetus of Jake's success on each of the parallels. True to the plot's focus on Jake La Motta the boxer, Jake fought Joey throughout the movie even though Joey fought to help his brother succeed both personally and professionally. Confrontation served as a motif of which was repeated throughout the movie. This was demonstrated in Jake's fight with the ever elusive opponents of paranoia and jealousy.
Notable, director Scorsese implemented an excellent technique that emphasized the importance of the relationship between Jake and Joey which involved Jake recounting a scene from the movie On the Waterfront between two brothers. And like Marlon Brando's character in On the Waterfront, Jake thought he could have done better. Scorsese did well with his control of lighting throughout the movie. There was never too much light in the movie even for the outdoor scenes. This was Scorsese very artfully controlling the mood of the audience.
Raging Bull is a title that very accurately describes Jake LaMotta's character. Special emphases being on rage which envelopes Jake's personal life and his professional life.