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Tripwire Reviews Criterion’s Raging Bull 4K UHD Edition

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1 min ago

May 13, 2024

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Tripwire’s editor-in-chief Joel Meadows takes a look at Criterion’s Raging Bull 4K UHD edition out on 20 May …

Raging Bull 4K UHD Criterion Edition
Director: Martin Scorsese
Stars: Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, Cathy Moriarty

Forty-forty years after the original release of Martin Scorsese’s blistering biopic, Criterion has put out a 4K UHD version of the director’s portrait of US legendary boxer Jake LaMotta, Raging Bull.

When Scorsese made this film, he had already built up quite a name for himself at the helm of around six other motion pictures including Taxi Driver and Mean Streets.

Raging Bull, which takes us from LaMotta’s early days as a fighter through the highs and lows of his life, is an admirably made film with an exceptional cast and electrifying performance from DeNiro. Arguably this film cemented the actor’s reputation even though he had already won an Oscar for his turn as the young Vito Corleone in Coppola’s The Godfather Part II back in 1974.

The rest of the cast are almost as strong as DeNiro here with the debut of Cathy Moriarty as his regularly put upon wife Vicky and Joe Pesci as Jake’s brother Joey, an actor who had left the field before the director coaxed him back to it here, is exceptional, showing a nuanced side to a particularly violent personality. Frank Vincent, who went on to be the psychotic face of the gangster in film and on TV in things like Goodfellas and The Sopranos, has a small but pivotal role here as small-time New York mobster Salvy. There is exceptional on-screen chemistry between Vincent and Pesci here.

Visually, Raging Bull is a tour de force, a work of truly impactful cinema and this 4K restoration brings Scorsese’s project to life with real aplomb and power. Shooting this in stark black and white also showed that the director wanted to lend it a touch of class and that it was very firmly part of a quality cinematic tradition. What is also intriguing here is that the film was made wth the direct input of LaMotta, who was quite comfortable to see a film that portrayed his life, warts and all. The problem with the film is that, despite the craft on display here with a strong directorial vision and a career-making portrayal from DeNiro, Jake LaMotta was a man who was hard to love or even like. He used his boxing career as an escape from his regular life, an existence that he often found very hard to cope with, resorting to violence against his wife.

The restoration here is pretty spectacular, picking out the details of the film and its period touches as never seen before. The extras including a four-part making of documentary offer a lot of fascinating insights into the making of the film. For example, it points out that Scorsese wasn’t a fight fan but he was intrigued and stirred by LaMotta’s story enough, which spurred him on to make it.

For fans of quality modern cinema, Criterion’s Raging Bull 4K UHD is a must-buy as it gives film aficionados arguably the ultimate version of Scorsese’s powerful work of memorable film.

JOEL MEADOWS

Here’s the film’s trailer