Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Raging Bull (1980)

Director: Martin Scorsese. Cast: Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, Joe Pesci, Frank Vincent. 129 min. Rated R. Sports.

Another re-visit. I had a better grasp of Jake La Motta's character analysis this time around, and realized the power of the movie's camerawork, as though during the boxing matches, De Niro was punching me instead of his opponent, to vent off his self-repressed sexual/physical rage. But I still couldn't understand why some critics say this was the best film of the 80s. I believe the Scorsese-De Niro partnership has offered us much better jewels in Taxi Driver, GoodFellas, and Cape Fear. Especially Cape Fear.

Mo says:

2 comments:

  1. I wonder how could I miss such an essentially powerful work of Marty through these years ,simply! Seeing a decline of a champion in his profession and personal life is really depressant and tragic. The music was gorgeous and captured me entirely. I loved Joe Pesci performance here , more than other collaboration with Marty and Boby…strong and impressive. The kind of dialogues reminded me “Pulp Fiction “ . In boxing as a central theme , Whereas Rocky was an inspiring movie to me , Raging bull was depressant but deep and realistic. The scene when Jake refers to the "I coulda' have been a contender" scene from “On the Waterfront”, was wonderful idea of complaining his brother and also debt of filmmaker to Kazan’s masterpiece .The final quote from Bible “"All I know is this: Once I was blind, and now I can see."seems as another symbol of resuscitation of a dead man and for a beautiful ending of a perfect movie which has been worked pretty well.

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  2. Was this your first visit to "Raging Bull"?! Thank God! At least I won't feel guilty for missing so many classics!

    I somehow miss Joe Pesci. Aside from him being the best cursing-machine in Hollywood, he's a great actor. Not sure why we haven't seen a movie from him for more than 10 years.

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