A complete waste of time

Rating: 1/10 (25 September 2006)

I am beginning to think that Martin Scorsese is the most overrated movie director of all times. Re-watching his oeuvre is a painful experience for me - discovering how pretentious and shallow his movies all are. Take Raging Bull.
De Niro won an Academy Award for gaining 60 pounds for a role in the name of method acting - so what? Does it change this utterly futile waste of celluloid?
I can't see a point watching this way too long story of a boxer, who - at the beginning of the film - is psychopathic, arrogant, sexist and primitive, turns into an unsuccessful boxer, then turns into a nightclub owner, then turns into a prisoner, and gee-whiz! he is still a psychopathic, arrogant, sexist and primitive man.
The moral is? Or is it an allegory? Nope. If anybody says it is, punch them in the face. Is it symbolic? Nope again. Does it reveal anything about anything? Sure, that De Niro is a great actor. And this, my friends, is way to little - we all know that, don't we?
I wish the scriptwriters had had anything to tell. Sometimes there are stories which are worth telling with no hidden agenda, or moral, or any of this stuff. This story isn't one of them. This is the biography of a moron who had no life. Why watch it?
I'm a BA, and still say go watch Rocky (!) instead. Even that's better.