Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
On Quartile, Raging Bull scores 8/10 across five categories — strongest on Acting (Well Above Average), weakest on Plot (Above Average).
Ranked among Quartile’s Top Acting.
The life of boxer Jake LaMotta, whose violence and temper that led him to the top in the ring destroyed his life outside of it.
Raging Bull is a landmark of American cinema. De Niro's performance as Jake LaMotta is one of the greatest in film history — physically and emotionally transformative — earning a clear 4. Scorsese and cinematographer Michael Chapman's black-and-white photography is extraordinarily visceral and expressionistic, especially the boxing sequences, which remain unlike anything else in sports cinema. The film's conception — turning a boxing biopic into a brutal, unflinching character study of self-destruction — is singular and audacious enough to justify top Novelty. The plot, however, is episodic and deliberately elliptical, which is a purposeful choice but leaves the narrative momentum uneven; it earns a solid but not exceptional 3. The ending, featuring LaMotta's nightclub monologue and the Marlon Brando reference, is haunting and thematically resonant but feels more like a coda than a truly powerful culmination — above average but not the film's strongest element.