One of the Greatest ever

Rating: 10/10 (25 October 2007)

There's a saying that a bad movie never feel short enough and that a great movie never feel long enough. This movie is great and even at 2 hours and 9 minutes it never felt slow. It is about one time middle weight champion Jake LaMotta it is a biography and a character study. We see a man that is a product of his environment, his outlet for what this environment has created and his eventual downfall, possibly because he never truly escaped his environment, and finally, eventual self realization.
What we see in this movie is that Jake LaMotta is indeed a product of his environment. He came from a volatile environment one where violence is common. A lot of his problem is faced and handled through violence whether it be dealing with his wives or his brother. From what we know now it is safe to assume he and his equally volatile brother learn this behavior from their father. Jake has an outlet for all this rage, boxing. He's a ferocious fighter who would willingly kill an opponent if given the opportunity. One fighter was treated ferociously because Jake's wife commented on him being good looking. As for the way he treats his wife, Jake treats her as the classic Alpha Male to the extreme. He is possessive and jealous, paranoid to the extent that he always has to know why she talked to certain men and who they were.
Jake's environment is also filled with "wiseguys" and he tries to distance himself from them, but his brother joey is friendly with them. As a matter of fact so was his wife, Vickie. We would see that even though in his boxing career he tried to stay away from the mob he could not completely and it almost prevented his chance at a championship. In the end even though he never became a 'wiseguy' he acted like one and it would bring about his downfall.
Martin Scorcese's direction is crisp and brilliant. He knows when to move the camera to make the film look like it had tremendous kinetic energy and he knows when to just allow the camera to stand still and let the actors act and the story unfold. The script, particularly in the case of Jake, does not divert to other things. Every word spoken by Jake tells you about Jake. And every word spoken by Jake is that of a man who is volatile, unpolished, domineering person, who believes he must have things his way.
The acting is superb, Robert DeNiro as Jake is brilliant. We see the volatility. When he paces while angered he seem to be a caged untamed animal looking both to escape and to pounce on whoever is foolish enough to get near him. Joe Pesci is great too. Long has he been seen as just a minor player in the Deniro/Scorcese movies but in truth he is as important a member as the other two. This was Cathy Moriarty's first film and she too was brilliant it is very surprising when you consider that she was twenty at the time.
Overall this film truly deserve all the accolades that it has received. It is a great film, brilliantly directed and acted, that shows how his environment shapes a man and how it affects his life and people around him.