Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
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.