MARTIN SCORSESE’S EXTRAORDINARY MOVIE IS BASED ON THE LIFE AND CAREER OF FORMER MIDDLE-WEIGHT BOXING CHAMPION JAKE LA MOTTA.
Nicknamed the ‘Bronx Bull’, the ferocious fighter battered his way through family, friends and foe in the 1940s, suffered a series of bruising humiliations in the ’50s, and ended up as a celebrity entertainer in the ’60s. The extremes of La Motta’s violent story don’t make for a conventional movie biography or boxing picture, and Scorsese uses the material to explore the very frightening limits of destructive sadomasochistic male aggression. It’s a work of enormous courage and dazzling technical virtuosity in which the language of violence and the violence of language become the binding elements. Robert De Niro’s performance as La Motta is physically and emotionally overwhelming. He deserved his Best Actor Oscar, but Raging Bull is first and foremost Scorsese’s masterpiece. —Peter Walsh.