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= 5 stars

Starring Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, Cathy Moriarty
Directed by Martin Scorsese

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Raging Bull, directed by Martin Scorsese, follows the rise and fall of boxer Jake La Motta. It works as an allegory of class struggle: how someone from the lower classes is unable to “make it” on his own, and must receive help from the system in order to get ahead. From the first frames, it’s obvious Raging Bull isn’t a feel-good sports flick. We see boxer Jake La Motta (Robert DeNiro), framed (or trapped) between ropes a boxing ring. With the camera inside the ring, the violence is close-up and immediate. A woman screams, a fight breaks out in the stands: blows are not confined to the ring. This is the America Jake La Motta calls home: where brutal, callous violence is everywhere. This theme recurs throughout Raging Bull, from fights in bars and night clubs to domestic violence between men, women, and their family members. The violence affects the way Jake interacts with the world. Jake argues with his wife about a steak and flips over a kitchen table. Jake’s brother Joey (Joe Pesci) threatens to stab his kid’s hand with a knife before even worse violence is inflicted on him.

Joey is Jake’s manager. He’s got a propensity for swear words. Both him and Jake are violent, demanding, irritable, and not terribly bright. Boxing is a profession perfect for them. They communicate through punches and cuss words. Their first conversation is rife with social commentary neither character picks up on. Jake’s sad because he’ll never get to fight the best boxers: he’s a middleweight and they’re heavyweights. He’s trapped by his “class.” Joey counters that his dream of transcending class is impossible, it’ll never happen, so stop worrying about it: the fatalistic angle. The conversation ends with Jake asking Joey to hit him in the face. It’s got to be the strangest exhibition of brotherly love I’ve seen.

When faced with a situation of morons beating each other up on a regular basis, it’s sometimes hard to tell if Scorsese is going for laughs or making serious social commentary. I go for the latter because at any point when you think a violent sequence is over, things go one step further, such as during Joey’s fight outside a night club, bashing someone’s head with a taxi cab door.

The “upper class” is represented by the mob. Joey knows mob people and they make regular appearances dressed in fancy suits and driving nice cars. Vicki (Cathy Moriarty) is introduced hanging out with Joey’s mob member friends at the neighborhood pool. Jake envies the mobsters for what they have, Vicki, clothes, cars: class. So of course, Jake first tries to impress Vicki with a fancy car.

Jake soon realizes he’ll never have a shot at the title unless he gets the mob’s help. Jake is told to intentionally lose a fight and then he’ll get a title shot. He reluctantly does this despite his protestations that he’ll “never go down for nobody.” But Jake must sell out to a certain degree in order to achieve success.

Jake has an irrational jealous streak which ultimately becomes focused on his brother. He thinks Joey is banging his wife. Jake’s falling out with his brother brings about his downfall. He loses his title, his wife and kids. He buys a nightclub and tries his hand at comedy, drinking heavily and dating strippers. De Niro gained sixty pounds for this section of the film. His stomach gets a co-starring role at this point. Whenever you hear of an actor going through extreme circumstances for a role, this is where the trend began.

The lower class Jake and Joey are from are alluded to as “animals”: dumb beasts with no class, no culture, and no way of dealing with the world except through sex and violence. During Jake and Joey’s first conversation, Joey tells Jake to stop acting like an “animal”. When Jake first sees Vicki, Joey admits he went out with her a few times but didn’t “bang her.” Jake grins and says she knew better: Joey’s an “animal” and she had a reputation to uphold. At a night club, a mob gangster refers to Jake as a “gorilla.” When Jake’s thrown in a jail cell for allowing underage drinking at his night club, he beats his head and fists against a cement wall, crying that he’s not a “stupid animal”. Many elements in his life are attempts to escape or make up for the fear that ultimately, he can’t rise above his animal nature.

All his life Jake’s been up against a jail-cell wall, a wall society builds. Despite his talents and strengths he can’t get anywhere by himself. His only success was his brief time of holding the title, which was only due to help from the corrupt system. His final monologue, taken from Marlon Brando’s On The Waterfront takes on different meanings in the context of this film: “I coulda had class.”

IMDB: Raging Bull
Wikipedia: Raging Bull
Rotten Tomatoes: Raging Bull 98%

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