Brought to you by PBR!

Rating: 10/10 (27 June 2008)

Frank McCourt claims that no one in America admits that they drink Pabst. I don't know that that's true, but it does seem to have been relegated to what we called "frat beer" when I was in college. In 1941, however, when Raging Bull takes place, it seems to have been a much bigger brand, at least that's the impression I get when seeing it as a major sponsor at major sporting events. Robert DeNiro stars as the enormously insecure Jake LaMotta, a young boxing legend who has trouble separating his boxing life with his private life.
Raging Bull walks a fine line between being a boxing movie and a social drama, as we switch back and forth between LaMotta's turbulent boxing career and his steadily disintegrating personal life. The boxing scenes are magnificent even though Scorsese didn't pick up on Hitchcock's infamous chocolate syrup prop, giving us huge amounts of blood (in typical Scorsese style) that looks like water (not typical Scorsese style). He also makes great use of super slow motion flashbulbs, which seems to be one of his recurring motifs.
More than anything else, the movie is a fascinating portrayal of what fame can do to someone who doesn't deserve it, or can't handle it. At the beginning of the movie, Jake is a young boxing hero and we want to root for him. Then as the movie progresses he reveals his true self  unpredictable, alcoholic, spontaneously violent, and generally just the kind of guy that no one in their right mind would want to be associated with. Even his own brother (in a brilliant performance by Joe Pesci) is uncomfortable around him because he's always doing some bizarre thing, like demanding that he punch him in the face repeatedly.
Through his own uncontrollable outbursts and inability to maintain his composure, his boxing career disintegrates, leaving him a burned out has-been with no idea how to handle the money he has left over. He opens a nightclub (can you guess what he called it?) and becomes a total dirtbag. All the stops have been pulled out by now, he no longer cares about anything, even the law, and he begins making stupid mistakes. He allows a 14-year-old girl to drink in his club because she's a good kisser, and ultimately lands himself in solitary. What's a 14-year-old girl doing in a nightclub anyway?
LaMotta's problems all seem to stem from his sense of invincibility. He doesn't believe anyone can beat him in the ring and taunts his opponents. He believes he is all-powerful in his personal life and ends up frightening the ones he loves and driving them away. And eventually he doesn't believe that even the police can harm him, so he flaunts his indifference to the law when an underage girl comes to his nightclub. "What're they gonna do?" he asks. And then we cut to him in prison, where he belongs.
In solitary, obviously, he hits rock bottom, and in the movie's most painful scene he has a total mental and physical breakdown, slamming his head repeatedly against the wall. When he gets out he returns to the club scene as a completely useless stand-up comedian, and when his audience boos him he responds with insults, which is exactly his problem. He is the result of being ultra-famous and yet having no showman's talent whatsoever beyond the ability to hit people really hard.
In the end, we come back to the beginning of the movie, which showed an older and significantly fatter LaMotta in his dressing room preparing to go out on stage. He chants over and over again something of which he now has to convince even himself