Powerhouse film making

Rating: 10/10 (1 January 2011)

Contrary to what might be the more common assertions that "Raging Bull" or "Goodfellas" are Scorsese at the top of his game, this earlier outing with De Niro was then, and still remains now, powerful, genuinely dark and startling! The themes you can see in this work are numerous; it is angry and political, it is visceral and controversial, the character study it presents is razor sharp in its precision. De Niro is studied and scary, truly on the edge and taking the audience with him, a perfect anti-hero, and Scorsese drives another knife into the belly of the Hollywood machine with an anti-saccharine vision, which is bold, shocking, and uncensored in a way that may not have been so easy nowadays. A powerful piece of cinema, full of iconic ideas and imagery that are hard to forget