The brutality of Raging Bull is intense, a mood Scorsese maintains consistently. And, connected with that, is the director's search for, if not beauty, then poetry, within that vivid viciousness. He succeeds in that search.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 11, 2023

De Niro playing La Motta in Raging Bull is beyond mere typecasting. It is an apotheosis. With La Motta as technical adviser, De Niro, an actor with a passion for authenticity, has found the ideal outlet for his singular talent.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 11, 2023

Even if Scorsese and De Niro have created a movie that defies categories, the sports film will never seem quite the same, and the boxing division has a new heavyweight against which past and future efforts will be measured.

| Oct 11, 2023

You certainly don't emerge from this entertainment uplifted, inspired or wishing to emulate a hero. Instead you've had your nose rubbed in the bloody, seamy side of the "manly act" and got to know one of its best, but least happy, champions.

| Oct 11, 2023

There is appalling violence in Raging Bull, but as in Greek tragedy the violence is the thunderbolt of shock of a total apprehension of the humanity of its characters.

| Oct 11, 2023

Between them, De Niro and Scorsese and their associates end up with a breathtakingly new dimension of memory and regret. If only I could feel the slightest moral resonance as well -- but I can't, and that makes all the difference.

| Oct 11, 2023

Seeing Martin Scorsese's new film is like visiting a human zoo... The life we watch is stripped to elemental drives, with just enough décor of complexity to underscore how elemental it basically is.

| Oct 11, 2023

It is above all a personal expression that takes its place in a body of work -- Scorsese's -- that has begun to have the size and coherence of a major novelist's.

| Oct 11, 2023

If you like a movie down-and-dirty, Raging Bull is it. Filmed in black-and-white, and shockingly well acted by De Niro, Raging Bull suggests that if you are looking for the source of evil in the world, you don't have to look any further than yourself.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 10, 2023

What is most remarkable about the new rigour of Raging Bull is that it tells La Motta's story with both complete realism and total subjectivity. In a way that leaves them difficult to disentangle... each is even made to seem a function of the other.

| Oct 10, 2023

It is a film that brings mixed feelings of fascination and revulsion -- like watching a trapped animal, hating its struggle and feeling its torment, but unable to release it and unable to stop watching.

| Oct 10, 2023

Somehow life drains out of things, though there are brilliantly lively and edgy moments, because of a central incoherence, a failure to come to grips with what Raging Bull might have been about.

| Oct 10, 2023

There is an element common to all great performances. It is utter audience immersion into the character. We forget about the actor, the star. It comes as no surprise that De Niro pulls this off... The amazing thing is that he does it instantly.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 10, 2023

Raging Bull is a compelling film, well written and crafted, superbly acted. In this leanest of all movie seasons, it is one of a handful of genuine contenders.

| Oct 10, 2023

De Niro is submerged again in La Motta -- riveting in the ring and in love but most impressive after the fights are over, as a club owner in his 50s. De Niro gained 50 pounds for this segment of the role. With makeup, the aging is extraordinary.

| Oct 10, 2023

What's surprising... is that Raging Bull's most lacerating scenes take place outside the ring. It's the first American movie I can recall that looks at the violent destructiveness of jealousy.

| Oct 10, 2023

Raging Bull is a bloody, swollen, sweaty tribute to those who are crazy enough to box.

| Oct 10, 2023

Of course, the film's true glory is De Niro. To miss him in anything is a mistake; to miss him here at the peak of his remarkable powers is to lose out on a once-in-a-lifetime film experience.

| Oct 10, 2023

[Martin Scorsese's] recreation of what went on in the ring may be no credit to the New York boxing world, which seems here mainly sadistic. But filmgoers with a stomach for such fighting will enjoy the thunderously sickening sound of every punch.

| Oct 10, 2023

The camerawork underpins the movie's style of graphic abstraction, framing Robert De Niro's resonant chameleon impersonation of La Motta with the emblematic force of a Goya etching.

| Oct 10, 2023