
When Jake LaMotta steps into a boxing ring and obliterates his opponent, he's a prizefighter. But when he treats his family and friends the same way, he's a ticking time bomb, ready to go off at any moment. Though LaMotta wants his family's love, something always seems to come between them. Perhaps it's his violent bouts of paranoia and jealousy. This kind of rage helped make him a champ, but in real life, he winds up in the ring alone.... (Full plot summary below)
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When Jake LaMotta steps into a boxing ring and obliterates his opponent, he's a prizefighter. But when he treats his family and friends the same way, he's a ticking time bomb, ready to go off at any moment. Though LaMotta wants his family's love, something always seems to come between them. Perhaps it's his violent bouts of paranoia and jealousy. This kind of rage helped make him a champ, but in real life, he winds up in the ring alone.
Leave your thoughts about Raging Bull.
| Edinburgh U Film SocietyKeith H. BrownWidely acclaimed as both the greatest film of the 1980s and of its director, Martin Scorsese, this is one of a select handful of films that everyone should see. |
| TIME MagazineRichard CorlissThe first hour of the film sets up the situation with a naturalistic vigor and cinematic resourcefulness unique to Scorsese. He knows precisely how to move the camera, dress a set, direct his splendid actors, underlay the music, edit to keep the viewer off guard and consistently impressed. But Raging Bull has nowhere to go but down and out. As Jake follows the trajectory of his predictable degradation, the film threatens to become as bloated and repetitious as the fat ex-champ in his cups. |
| Slant MagazineMatthew ConnollyScorsese might never again find a subject as ideal as Jake LaMotta, the Bronx-based boxer whose public bouts and private demons Raging Bull chronicles with such bruising acuity. |
| Time OutKeith UhlichBut when has a performer as fully and uniquely sacrificed himself to the moving-picture cause as De Niro? He leeches LaMotta of soul and conscience, making him a purely physical creature sculpted in sinew for the glory days, then padded up in lard for the declining years. |
| leonardmaltin.comLeonard MaltinThe other night, my wife and I sat down to watch the new 30th Anniversary Blu-ray edition of Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull. I could scarcely believe it's been three decades since... |
| BBC.comMichael ThomsonEvery swirling camera movement, every distinctive angle, has a real reason for existing in this story of world middleweight boxing champ Jake La Motta. |
| Rolling StonePeter TraversThis is not a film about boxing. This is a film about the human condition and about cinema itself. |
| Los Angeles TimesSheila BensonThe entire film is played at such high pitch it may well exhaust audiences that don't come prepared. And, at the heart of the film, there is the mystery of Jake himself, but that is what separates Raging Bull from all other fight movies, in fact, from most movies about anything. Raging Bull is an achievement. |
| Chicago TribuneGene SiskelAnother harsh character study, with poignant echoes of "Taxi Driver." |
| Austin ChronicleMichael BertinThe performances are riveting and the visuals are stunning. The boxing sequences are brutally realistic - there are no crappy Rocky theatrics here - and the humanity oozes out of every scene. |