Saturday, February 26, 2005

MOVIE : Raging Bull

This is the story of a world class boxer, his rise and fall, and the brutality of his personality. It had a ponderous feel, and some quite violent scenes, and was ultimately a darn good film.
Another Scorsese and DeNiro film, this was an excellent parallel for the younger, more immature 'Mean Streets' that I saw a month ago. A similar theme really - looking at a man who is self destructive, trying to fathom why he is so. While I wasn't that big a fan of the earlir film, this one made a lot more sense to me; I wasn't just spending the whole film yelling at the character 'get it together!'
La Motta, who was an actual, real life boxer from NYC, is a violent man who gets lucky; an amazing wife, becomes world champ for a while, but through stupidity, jealousy and self-destructive behaviour throws it all away. Normally you hate this kind of character, but somehow I didn't, even when he was doing some vicious, stupid things. Fine acting from Robert DeNiro.
Raging Bull is a great name; it implies ungainly, 'in a china shop', huge (he gets fatter and fatter as the film progresses), unstoppable, stuborn and stupid. All characteristics of the main character.
La Motta's wife is played by Cathy Moriarty, who has to be one of the sexiest women I've seen on screen, from her amazing looks to her husky voice she is amazing. She did some decent acting, but was one of the more guilty in the mouthing of words sin (for some reason there was a lot of words being mouthed, not said).

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