Raging Bull Reviews
Top CriticWhen has a performer as fully and uniquely sacrificed himself to the moving-picture cause as De Niro?
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
De Niro is always absorbing and credible, even when his character isn't.
Martin Scorsese makes pictures about the kinds of people you wouldn't want to know.
I can't pan it, but this 1980 fantasy biography of fighter Jake LaMotta seems unquestionably Martin Scorsese's weakest work, at least to that point in his career.
This film does more than make you think about masculinity, it makes you see it -- in a way that's relevant to all men, not just Bronx boxers.
The film that many consider the finest of its decade.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
An underdog in its day and a classic today.
Though Raging Bull has only three principal characters, it is a big film, its territory being the landscape of the soul.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
The most obvious basis for the film's claim to greatness lies in Scorsese's devastating critique of the very codes of masculinity that shaped him as a filmmaker, and in Robert De Niro's performance, through which that critique is made flesh.
It's the best film I've seen about the low self-esteem, sexual inadequacy and fear that lead some men to abuse women.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
There's no room for romanticism in the ring with inky black blood staining the canvas. During fight sequences, the director also uses a number of point-of-view shots designed to show the world, however briefly, from La Motta's perspective.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
