Raging Bull

You’d be surprised how much mileage a movie can get when it tries to make the focus on not-so-great people. While it seems counter-productive to make a movie filled with nothing but unlikeable people, there have been shows and films that have filled their screens with human beings with no redeemable features, yet through good writing, engaging acting or an understanding what makes someone who they are, it can be an interesting sit for comedic or even dramatic purposes. Its why so many people get entranced by villains in media, there is something that can be enjoyed by characters with little to no redeeming qualities. So why does it fail so heavily in Martin Scorsese’s 1980 American biopic sports drama, Raging Bull. After suffering his first loss, middleweight boxer, Jake LaMotta (played by Robert de Niro) pushes his way through several grueling boxing matches and continually pushes to make it to the top. What is harmful in this mindset is that his aggressive and unhinged personality results in success in the ring, but in complete failure on the outside. It puts him at odds with his brother Joey (played by Joe Pesci) and his second wife, Vickie (played by Cathy Moriarty). It reaches a boiling point as his actions and his temper get more frequent and his attitude becomes much more volatile, paranoid, and insane, and this only grows worse as nothing is being done to fix this issue and the boxing lifestyle is only encouraging it. Based on the memoirs of the real-life Jake LaMotta, Raging Bull parades being much more complex and thought-provoking than it really is, and displays a tale of an individual so toxic, so unpleasant and so irredeemable that its almost impressive Scorsese was willing to give him a movie. But does this attitude excuse the film for being boring?

While the movie nowadays is held in the highest esteem by critics and audiences, it was met with mixed reception when it came out because people just weren’t into the violence and graphic nature of the movie. Its safe to say that this was a film (maybe at the time) was trying to be a little more controversial and be more intense than a standard sports movie at the time, but a striking tone and content doesn’t make something interesting or excuse it for not being mindful enough of what its portraying. The tragic thing about this film is that its actually a pretty great idea; a mentally ill man whose negative attributes are destroying his homely life are instead being intensified by the job that he envelopes himself in, like the boxing ring is a toxic environment that lets him thrive and he can grow as this scummy individual and he pays for it in the real world, where in the real world, his anger and intensity is viewed as it should be (horrible and abusive), in the ring its what gets him praise, fame and wealth. Despite this fantastic idea of the follies of dramatizing violence and a lack of mental health care, the movie doesn’t dissect this, rather just state it. The movie does the horrible trick of pretending like stating or viewing the mental state of a character is the same as exploring it, and nothing is explored within the script written by Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin. The pace of the movie feels incredibly wasted and laborious because it features monotonous repetitive scenes that don’t further anything about the character and instead just wallows in this hateful cesspool of anger and bitterness. It’s a movie that is comfortably accepting of its negative tone and stance, but there’s no taking advantage of what this could offer because there’s no sense of deviation, intrigue, or nuance. It seems to capture the basic sum-up of what this guy’s life was like, but it doesn’t feel like anything that happens enforces his attitude, more that he was always like this and he’s never going to change, which is boring. Its grinds to a halt at the end where it pretends to come full circle, but nothing up to that point makes it feel like anything was learned or even gained.

Robert de Niro was basically the reason the movie was made to begin with; being the one to read the memoir and get the idea for the film, he was even able to convince Scorsese to make it despite not liking the script and outright hating sports (especially boxing ironically). It’s a movie that felt like it had passion behind it at least from de Niro’s part, as he put on a lot of weight for the role, actually got in contact with the real man to get inspiration, and even participated in a few boxing matches to get the idea, so the problem is not in lack of care, its in lack of good writing. There is not a single character in this movie that has a single shred of humanity, they are all awful disgusting individuals without anything worth liking them about, and that would be fine if they weren’t so boring. These people do awful things, yet there isn’t any explanation of why they act like that, so they just come across as pointlessly aggressive characters who do awful things just because it’s an environment where the movie says everybody has to be awful. The actors are clearly putting in a lot of effort to make these roles at least well performed, but they come across as lame 80s mafia stereotypes. Robert de Niro suffers this the worse, as his character is so pathetically dull and uninteresting that there is nothing worth taking away from him at all. Most characters that are heartless and irredeemable have something to latch onto; a level of deceptive charm, a tragic backstory, a level of intrigue, he has noting. He is exactly what he says he is, a scum pig head bum of a man.

From a technical level, the movie does have some nice shots by cinematographer Michael Chapman, some good editing during the matches and a unique look due to its black and white visuals, but even those don’t feel like they serve any purpose. The usage of the black and white doesn’t feel like it extenuates the slower or faster moments of the movie, it feels like a product of its time but nothing much else, and while it does help to mask the blood in the fight scene so that it’s a little less graphic, it doesn’t make them any less violent. Weirdly enough, the violent moments outside of the boxing ring are more uncomfortable than the actual fight sequences because they feel more exploitative and trying to confront a realistic issue. The boxing matches themselves are okay, decently edited by frequent Scorsese collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker (managing to secure herself an Oscar) and contain a few cool shots by director of photography Michael Chapman, but there are some many, there’s no real difference between any of the fights, and its impossible to care about the character, so it gets old really quickly. It doesn’t even work on a contrast level; the outside lifestyle of the characters is just as shouty and uncomfortable (If not MORESO!) than the boxing lifestyle itself, there’s no escape from it, no reprieve from the awfulness, no sense of development or care, its just constant annoyance from these idiot characters. The dialogue gets way too much mileage out of on-the-spot ad-libbing, as it can be felt by many of the actors constantly stumbling over their words and repeating the same line over and over again, it gets so dull, and the sound-mixing makes those scenes even harder to hear.

Raging Bull honestly could have been a better movie if it actually attempted to be more complex and interesting instead of pretending like just showing something equals dissecting a topic. While the real-life Jake LaMotta was equally as scummy and awful as he was portrayed here, there was at least some incidents in his actual life that helped example his situation. Later on, movies would tackle this concept and do it a lot better, but instead this one didn’t quite get the idea correct. The acting is pretty solid and once and a while there’s a good shot or edit, but with an aimless repetitive story that lacks purpose, a total lack of depth or intrigue over this person’s life, and characters that you will just be begging to spontaneously combust on the spot just to get them to shut up. It’s a favorite for many, but it’s hard to see why. If there’s anything that’s to take away from this movie, its that boxing really isn’t as interesting as Rocky made it out to be.