RAGING BULL (1980)





"Martin Scorseses 1980 masterpiece is a must-see for anyone interested in the New American Cinema"

Raging Bull is story about  boxer Jake LaMotta ,man with volcanic temper whose life was run by  obsessive jealousy and insecurity,  "animal in the ring and pig outside" ,as  Scorsese himself once characterized him.
It is one of Robert DeNiro  best performances and  it's brutal, blundering and impossible to look away -- much like a real boxing match itself.
Jake LaMotta, the Bronx Bull, butted his way to the middleweight championship of boxing in 1949. In his autobiography, Raging Bull, he says he “fought Sugar Ray Robinson so many times I got diabetes.”


Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin(Mean Streets) wrote this amazing  screenplay that was loosely based on La Motta's autobiography book, which chronicle the boxer's own rise and tragic, self-destructive, violent fall .
The film takes us through the highlight reel of LaMotta's life from the early 1940s through the mid 1960s—with those formative early years conspicuously left out. Jake rises in the middleweight boxing ranks along with brother and manager Joey (Joe Pesci). He comes achingly close to the title but agrees to throw the match at the last minute, before finally getting the champion's belt in 1949. Along the way, he ditches his first wife in favor of Vickie (Cathy Moriarty), a blond beauty from the neighborhood that Jake meets at the local pool.




Martin Scorsese's 1980 film was voted  as the greatest film of the decade, but when he was making it, he seriously wondered if it would ever be released: “We felt like we were making it for ourselves.”
The movie won Oscars for De Niro and editor Thelma Schoonmaker, and also was nominated for best picture, director, sound, and supporting actor (Joe Pesci) and actress (Moriarty). 
“Raging Bull” is not a film about boxing but about a man with paralyzing jealousy and sexual insecurity, for whom being punished in the ring serves as confession, penance and absolution. It is no accident that the screenplay never concerns itself with fight strategy. For Jake LaMotta, what happens during a fight is controlled not by tactics but by his fears and drives.
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-raging-bull-1980

Jake: I know she's doin' somethin'. I just wanna catch her once. Just once.
Joey: Hey Jack, you wanna do yourself a favor? Bust her f--kin' hole, throw her out, either that or live with her and let her ruin your life, 'cause that's what's happenin'.


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