review

A number of America's leading critics voted this the best film of the 1980s, which is perhaps a little over the top, although I do see their point. It's based on the life of Jake La Motta (Robert De Niro), a slum kid who fought his way out of the Bronx to become middleweight boxing champion of the world, earned and wasted several small fortunes and, in a curious sort of comeback, re-emerged as asadly inept stand-up comedian.

What is so striking about the film is the way it captures the raw energy and simmering anger of the subject himself. It makes little attempt to delve inside him and indeed the impression given is that there would be little to find there anyway. La Motta, who was involved in the production of the picture, is portrayed as a man not much given to introversion, a primitive force who wears his emotions on the outside and is most distinguished by a gift for violence which, though useful in his chosen trade, destroys his private life. To a large extent his nemesis is his beautiful teenage wife (Cathy Moriarty), his obsession with whom drives him into paroxysms of self-induced jealously. He has no understanding of women; to him they are either sluts or goddesses and sometimes both.

This is a visceral film, fast, exciting, often brutal both in the fight scenes and in the way it associates sexuality with violence, and handled with immense confidence by Martin Scorsese. De Niro, who took dedication to his craft so far as to put on 60lb to play the older, fatter La Motta, is outstandingly good as a man in whom rage, frustration and bewilderment struggle for supremacy; not a likeable man perhaps, but one ultimately deserving of our sympathy or even pity.