Rating: 
Summary: Scorsese masterpiece
Review: Scorsese is "Scorsese" because of films like this. And DeNiro is "Deniro" because of acting like this.The very fact that they can both make you love and feel for such an unappealing man as Lamotta is testiment to their brilliance. This is a brilliant film with Deniro shining in the lead role. Little Joe Pesci was also well cast. Although he doesn't have a major role, when he is on the screen he looks and sounds the part ala Casino. Lamotta is at war with men in the ring. The fight scenes were brutal and well shot. But nothing really compares to the war Lamotta had with himself. It may not have been a brutal war, but it was an emotional phychological battle that Deniro plays so well you feel as though you can see his pain. Deniro deserved his acadamy award for this role...and then some.
Rating:
Summary: Great movie, but DVD's widescreen a complete phony!
Review: I rented this movie on DVD, and I agree that the DVD widescreen is false advertisement. I can't believe MGM would do something like this. Even though it's one the best films ever made, fans would still like to see it on it's true widescreen format. I've been hearing that good movies such as "American Pie" and "The Good, Bad, and Ugly" are also widescreen phonies. I would make sure before purchasing these movies on DVD. The "Raging Bull" DVD doesn't even have any special features on it.
Rating:
Summary: Landmark film not to be missed by anyone
Review: Even though I found "GoodFellas" to be a better film, Martin Scorsese hit his peak in 1980 with "Raging Bull", a very true to life story of Jake LaMotta (Robert DeNiro in his finest performance). The opening scene shows a middle aged LaMotta rehearsing lines for a show he will perform later in the night. All of a sudden a much younger LaMotta is in the ring. The film deals with how LaMotta's jelousy, violent temper, and sexual frustrations and how his only punishment is when he takes a beating in the ring which he brings on himself. It also explains how his behavoir helped to ruin his life and his career. Joe Pesci gives a stellar performance as Jake's brother Joey as does Cathy Moriarty as Jakes' wife. The boxing scenes are extroidinary and very brutal. The oscar winning editing is some of the best. Why Scorsese lost the directing Oscar to Robert Redford is crazy and confusing. And why the film lost best picture to "Ordinary People" is rediculous. "Raging Bull" is a true classic of acting, directing, scripting, and all other good things that come in a movie. A flawless film. Don't miss it.
Rating:
Summary: Masterwork about a man whose greatest enemy is himself
Review: I can't believe the reviewer from Maryland below that actually thought that this film was amateurish and clumsy. Did you see the same movie I did? This is Martin Scorsese at the peak of his considerable powers. Everything about the direction in this film alone is brilliant. The ringtime scenes are breathtakingly brutal and true to the sport, and DeNiro gives a gritty and real performance. Everyone knows about how he became fifty pounds overweight to portray the fat, middle-aged La Motta. But also, in his training for the role, he sparred with the real La Motta for two years and gave him several smashed teeth and a broken rib. He also trained with Joe Pesci and gave him two cracked ribs. DeNiro was determined to make this the performance of a lifetime. And he "becomes" Jake La Motta on the screen. As for the viewer from Maryland, I don't understand anybody who could have no respect for a masterpiece like this. If you know an iota about exhilerating filmmaking you should respect this 100 percent for that alone. But the fact of the matter is that this film deserves respect for every aspect of it, and especially the blood, sweat and tears that the actors put into it.
Rating: 
Summary: Clumsy
Review: Lousy movie. Almost as bad as Lost in Space. I found it very amateurish - particularly the unsubtle operatic opening - and sunk with the weight of its own pretensions. I was a big De Niro fan after Godfather 2 and he's probably the only interesting thing about this movie. But I couldn't stand the little guy who swears a lot. Watching this movie was like being hit in the head repeatedly with a sock full of vomit. If it's a good boxing movie you're after try Fat City. Guaranteed no pretensions. And no overeating.
Rating:
Summary: Does acting becoem better than this
Review: If the commity give the oscars to the rocky and not to the raging bull they ae just idiots.I do not know if a boxing movie and acting becomes better than this. The cinematography is excellent as well as Joe Pechi ofcourse. But the real stars i woudl say are De Niro and Scorsese. Thanks for everyone who worked in this excellent movie, adn thank you De NIro.
Rating:
Summary: A look at the selfdestructive side of humanity
Review: What are great films made of, what do they have to contain that makes them so remarkable ? A moving story, great acting, superb camerawork, exceptional sound, cleverly editing, masterful directions ? Raging bull not only contains all these elements, but its groundbreaking in all of them. Its one of the best films ever made, and as with good wine it just gets better with each passing year. What makes this black and white film so damn remarkable? When all the technical aspects of a film are used at its best to serve the initial story it creates a magic that is unexplainable. Each boxing-match is individually coreographed and edited. the camera moves in ways it never did before. The soundeffects are heartstopping. The story is based on the life of the boxing champion Jake La Motta... the meanest sunofabich ever to have played the main character in a film (at least in the 80's), honestly played by Robet De Niro who took method acting to new hights when he decided to get fit in order to play the boxer, and then gained 30.kg to play the older fatter Jake La Motta. He gives his best performance ever, as he is able to bring out the sympathetic side of this monster. But eventually its the story that moves us... about a boxer whose life consists of fighting, but his biggest fights are the ones fought outside the ring. A man that's filled with so much self destruction that he destroys not only himself but everyone around him, his brother, wife, family.... this film just works in so many layers. Its humane but never sentimental, very straight forward yet so intelligent. a must see for absolutely everyone.A flawless masterpiece If you will only see one film for the rest of your life, see this one....
Rating:
Summary: Knock yourself out with Raging Bull
Review: This is Scorsese's finest moment. A poetic work that mixes the deeply personal story of a boxer with unbelievable directorial style. The movie's fighting scene's are something to behold. We get almost a dance sequence of poetic movements and violence. There is also a religious underplay in the movie (Scorsese is a devote catholic) which is shown through the final boxing bout, where DeNiro is 'crucified' on the ropes. Aside from the black and white photography and expert use of the camera, the movie's real focus is not boxing, but masculinity. LaMotta feels somewhat inadequate sexuallly and as a man. He has to constantly prove that he can fight and be a 'contender.' He is violent and a bad husband because he is constantly beating himself up. He struggles with the notion that his girl finds another boxer attractive. His response is mauling him in the boxing ring so that he is not a 'pretty boy' anymore. Another conflict exists between LaMotta and his brother, who is played brilliantly by Joe Pesci. La Motta suspects and eventually accuses him of sleeping with his wife. By the end of the movie he is a pathetic performer. A man who is now paid to provide cheap laughs. A man who was never knocked down by one of the greatest boxers in history. He is alone and decreped. Overweight and driven to a life of sleazery by his own paranoia and narcoticism. Scorsese is showing us that it is LaMotta, and not other people, who keeps fighting himself. This movie is a touching and brutal look at a fighter. It is a hallmark movie in terms of its style and film work, but more improtantly it shows us the tragic fate of a man not being able to come to terms with his own worth and manhood.
Rating:
Summary: a knock out classic
Review: one of the greatest films of all-time.it's time less.for fans of boxing it's striped down unconventinal and very street with ordinary folks with ordinary issues.that's what makes this film so mind blowing.it acts the way it was meant to be made.no compromises.
Rating:
Summary: A harsh landscape of human soul
Review: The movie certainly marks the peak of artistic fusion of Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorsese. It is so much more than simply a naturalistic portrayal of a self-destructive, brutish man. Jake, just like Travis in Taxi Driver, resorts to violence because he does not have religion, books, psychoanalyst, or introspective faculties to soothe the demons that rage within him. Only through violence can he make sense of the reality; pain given or pain received provides a solace of familiarity that the precariousness of woman's affection can never offer. Ugliness of it all, woman's faithless libido, and the ultimate futility of any creative effort represent for him a true underbelly of life. He has to destroy himself and those who cared for him because his conviction of the baseness of all human insticts and of life itself necessitate destruction. He will be doomed, it's only a question of time, he feels. Jake could be called a streetwise existentialist. Of course, he might not be aware of it. Through his actions might be saying "let's get it over with, let's finish it off...it will come anyway". And so he strips himself of all that is important to him, for as Bob Dylan would say" man who's got nothing, go nothing to lose". In a terrible irony, Jake has to lose his wife, his brother and the career so he doesn't have to live anymore with the fear of losing them. It's truly remarkable that the creators of the movie never succumbed to melodrama nor did they endow Jake with emotional depth that he cannot possible possess. He is never a self-explanatory paragon for what his acts suggest to us. Like a real human being, he is a torn creature and, in fact, my above interpretation of his motivation might be wrong. Just like our judgement of friends, spouses or parents is often misguided, we might be wrong in our take on Jake. Even tose who closest to us do not reveal themselves like a case study in a psychology book, and neither does Jake. How tempting it is to make him more than he is, how aesthetically gratifying. Yet, Scorsese and DeNiro never cave in. Jake LaMotta remains defiantly "superficial" till the end. He is so startlingly and refreshingly antithetical to those cliches of brutality from your average pseudo-psychological movies that often read like Psycholgy 100. Let's be grateful that he exists.
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