Raging Bull

Vincent Canby writing For The New York Times in 1980, when Raging Bull was first released:

It’s exceedingly violent as well as poetic and, finally, humane in the way of unsentimental fiction that understands that a life - any life - can only be appreciated when the darkness that surrounds it is acknowledged. There’s scarcely a minute in ‘’Raging Bull’‘ that isn’t edged by intimations of mortality. Jake La Motta, played by Robert De Niro in what may be the performance of his career, is a titanic character, a furious original, a mean , inarticulate, Bronx-bred fighter whom the movie refuses to explain away in either sociological or psychiatric terms, or even in terms of the Roman Catholicism of his Italian-American heritage.

I couldn’t describe the movie any better. Raging Bull is a fantastic film.

Raging Bull (1980). Director: Martin Scorsese. Screenplay: Paul Schrader, Mardik Martin. Cast: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Cathy Moriarty.