RAGING BULL - CRITERION CHANNEL

This review originally written for DVDTalk.com in 2011.

Last week, after seeing David O. Russell's marvelous new boxing movie The Fighter, I commented to a friend that it doesn't make any sense that I haven't gotten into watching boxing proper, because every time I see a boxing movie, I think I should. It's my favorite sports genre. In fact, I don't really consider boxing movies to be sports movies. They are separate from the rest, their own thing. I would never automatically want to go see a baseball movie, or one about football or basketball or hockey, but if it's about a boxer, okay, sign me up.

Of course, one of the greats of the genre is Raging Bull, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro's 1980 biography of Jake La Motta. You could easily claim that it's the heavyweight champion of all boxing movies, and I don't think I'd argue with you. It's a pugilistic masterpiece, a dangerously choreographed piece of work that explodes in great dervishes of fury and falls back with the heaviest of heartbreaks.

Jake La Motta was a middleweight fighter whose heyday was the 1940s. An Italian boy raised in the Bronx, La Motta was a force of nature. Throughout Raging Bull, he is regularly referred to as an animal, even if he's only called by his nickname once. For Jake, every moment of his life is a fight, whether he's dancing on the canvas or drinking in a nightclub or eating his dinner at home. Every person in his life is an opponent, and he is always working out the angles to make sure that no one gets the better of him. Every conversation is an opportunity for one of his foes to underestimate him, and every riposte a potential knockout punch.

Raging Bull follows Jake over the decade as he swings his way toward an eventual title fight, the distant achievement that eludes him for the bulk of his career--most other boxers are scared to brawl with him--and once he's got it, it's only downhill after. The bouts are shown briefly, lingering longest on the more important matches, including his longtime rivalry with Sugar Ray Robinson (Johnny Barnes). Scorsese famously kept his camera inside the ring, keeping us close in the clinches, letting us feel each pummeling. This gives Raging Bull its lasting immediacy, while the decision to shoot in black-and-white ensures its timelessness. History is alive in the moment, yet there is the usual classic Hollywood vibe that only Scorsese can do without making it look like he's playing dress-up.

For as memorable as these skirmishes are, however, they are only a small part of Raging Bull. The movie is adapted from Jake La Motta's autobiography, with a script by Paul Schrader (Mishima [review]) and Mardik Martin (Mean Streets), and it shows the rise and fall, warts and all. The unsavory elements include a thrown fight and a later vice charge. They also show Jake's violent streak, and his abuse of those around him. The two most important relationships in Jake's life are his brother Joey (Joe Pesci) and his second wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty). He meets Vickie when she is 15 and while he is still married. It's hard to say what she sees in him, but he clearly sees the beautiful young blonde as some golden prize. He's a jealous creature, though, and one used to getting his way. He browbeats both Vickie and Joey, both of whom only want the best for him, and when words aren't enough, he raises a hand to them, as well.

In 2009, James Toback's documentary Tyson earned a lot of praise for the way it probed the personality of Mike Tyson and the culture of violence that created him. Toback uses the fighter's own words to try to poke at the contradictions in his character. Is he the beast most believe him to be? Scorsese explores similar questions about La Motta, though Raging Bull is more effective because, unlike Toback, Scorsese doesn't seem desperate to exonerate his subject. He's just as fascinated by what the warrior lifestyle is doing to the man who takes the punches, but he also sees the tragedy such a figure inflicts on the world around him. Sure, the business and lifestyle of boxing might force a man into dark corners, but such a man is trained to fight back. La Motta turns the hurt around tenfold.

I could go on and on about the virtues of Raging Bull. Thelma Schoonmaker's invisible mis-en-scene deserves praise, as does Michael Evje and Gary S. Gerlich's tremendous sound design. They use distorted wildlife noises to soundtrack the fight scenes, and they pull the audio in and out, mimicking the elasticity of time Jake experiences in the ring. Michael Chapman's artful photography pulls similar moves. Dialing down the playback speed to a molasses crawl effects the reality of a complex action like a good punch combo. They say an expert in any field experiences the moment when they perform their most complicated tasks differently, something similar to how, when we're in a car crash, the scant few seconds leading to impact seem to go on forever. At the same time, Scorsese and Chapman orchestrate tremendous zooms and pans, capturing the speed and force of a La Motta jab.

Likewise, not enough can be said about the unbelievable cast. Pesci is a fireball, and he and De Niro have an unmatched rapport onscreen. As a duo, they have never been as fresh as they are in Raging Bull. You can believe they are brothers who have lived together all their lives. The rhythm of their back-and-forth lacks any self-consciousness, it just flows naturally. Cathy Moriarty is also remarkable as Vickie. It's easy to miss the range she shows here if you don't keep in mind that the actress, who was approaching her 20s, starts off the movie playing 15, several years younger than she actually was, and ends playing a few years older than her real age. The change isn't sweeping--not as obvious as, say, De Niro's weight gain as Jake--but keep your eye on her, see how her body language and presence changes from her first scenes with Jake, when she's got a slight touch of the awkward teen in the way she quietly slumps, and then compare it to the strong woman who eventually stands up to the bruiser.

The movie still belongs to De Niro, of course. He's in nearly every scene, and though it's one of his more mimicked roles, it's one of his least mannered. The De Niro tics disappear under La Motta's agility and, eventually, his girth. Though the actor is less recognizable under the prosthetic nose and curly hair, it's not really about the props, it's about how he carries himself. We've seen him rage in other movies, we've heard him pull out the New York accent, but Jake is a whole other person. He's not Travis Bickle or Jimmy Conway, he's not even really De Niro. It's easy to take swipes at the actor now for a perceived lessening of quality control in regards to choices he makes, but you know what, screw you. He made Raging Bull; your snark pales by any comparison.

Raging Bull regularly tops lists of the best films of the 1980s and rides high on any more expansive round-ups of cinema's best. As with most of the other usual suspects, be it Citizen Kane or It's a Wonderful Life [review] or Casablanca, the reverence exists for a reason. Raging Bull really is that good. Time passed and repeat viewings only stand to prove the level of craft that Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, et al., were operating at. Good storytelling and solid application of technique is the impenetrable armor of classic cinema: you can never pierce it or tear it down.

THIEF - #691

I am sure back in the day all video store employees had games they played to pass the time when they got bored. When another loop through The Simpsons or Arrested Development DVDs wasn't enough of a distraction, it was necessary to find other things to keep the day from drowning. Where I worked, on particularly slow days, we would each pick out a handful of movies that we had never seen but always wanted to. Once chosen, we would watch the first five or ten minutes and analyze them. I think it was someone's pick of ...And Justice for All that led us to a slow-day revelation. The lengthy opening of Norman Jewison's film is a set-up that has nothing to do with plot, but everything with character. It seemed indicative of what made 1970s American cinema special: the storytelling was the concern, and the filmmaking itself was paramount. No one was worried we wouldn’t know where it was going, or even what might happen next. There was no formula to how the tale was told, just follow the behavior.

Michael Mann's Thief came at the tail end of that era, but it brings up the rear nicely. It opens with an extended heist, dialogue at a minimum, dropping the audience straight into the action. There is a clear line to be drawn between it and Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive [review], one that I would think Refn would acknowledge. Though both openers would, on paper, sound like they are plot mechanicals, the truth is neither has that much importance to the main story. Seeing either Ryan Gosling's driver or James Caan's thief on the job tells us what we need to know about them, how they identify themselves, but not necessarily where the narrative they inhabit might be heading. The particularly key information is in what they do after the crime is done. As Frank, Caan goes to the waterfront and shares a danish with a fisherman, relaxing as the sun rises over the water, calming down from the rush of the robbery. He doesn't introduce himself or give his name, he just is. A thief, and a man.

The whole first half hour or so is just our chance to get to know Frank. It's only in subsequent scenes that we find out he sells cars as a front for his night-time activities, or that he has a thing with the waitress (Tuesday Weld) at his favorite diner. He is a thief first, an individual second, and the evolution of how he is presented to the audience mirrors his personal quest within the film. Stealing diamonds is funding the construction of another life. It will eventually pay for him to be out of the underworld and a citizen in the legitimate world. He's even mapped this out with a collage he made in prison.

Of course, there still emerges an identifiable plot to push Thief along. The first heist and some resulting fallout gets Frank the attention of a local crime boss (Robert Prosky) who wants to bring Frank in under his umbrella. The independent operator is reluctant, and with good reason: just talking to the guy puts him on the radar of law enforcement who previously had no idea he existed. Yet, the promise of a big score means Frank can fast track his transition to the good life, marrying and having a family. He also needs to move fast to get his mentor, Okla (Willie Nelson), out of prison before the old convict's heart condition takes him down for good.

The new boss sets up Frank with a rather large target, and despite the job being complicated, the takeaway will be worth the risk. There are shades of Jean-Pierre Melville in Mann's stoic staging, though Thief also owes plenty to Jules Dassin's Rififi [review], possibly in the same way Refn owes a nod or two to Mann. I’d wager it’s no mere happenstance that Criterion has reissued Dassin’s 1955 caper alongside Thief. The climactic rush to stop a double-cross and keep mother and child out of the combat zone is not an altogether original scenario, but there seems to be at least some eye cast from Mann back to Dassin. Then again, there are lots of genre tropes being employed here. The ending of Thief is also reminiscent of many a western--though Mann's handling of the violence lacks the bloody grace of a Sam Peckinpah, not to mention the restrained tension of traditional shootouts like the climax of High Noon. [review] 

Fans of the Miami Vice TV show or Crime Story [review] are familiar with Mann's affinity for slow-mo paint-splattered showdowns. The violence here is fairly clunky. The aesthetics only call attention to themselves. The years have not been kind, nor is high-definition the filmmaker's friend. It's a little jarring, because everywhere else, the new technology shows how Mann's love of neon was already firmly in place, even at this early stage. The night-time skylines are beautiful, as is the shot of James Caan driving his shiny Cadillac onto the car lot, lit up under a canopy of light bulbs.

This is merely window-dressing, however. All of the macho stuff--the gunfights, the stealing--is superfluous; it all still comes back to character. The best material in Thief is what happens away from the job. Willie Nelson, for instance, shows an incredible depth of emotion in his short appearance, and there are some interesting class issues that emerge as Frank tries to bury his past and present himself as a working stiff looking to make good.

The best bit in the movie, though, is an extended interaction between Caan and Weld. Out on a date, they both decide to put their cards on the table and get real. No more hidden pasts, no more looking the other way. The exchange feels raw and unscripted. No artifice, just two people sharing a back-and-forth. I didn't check the clock, but it goes on for what seems like ten minutes, and the two of them could easily highjack the movie at that point. I'd have been more than happy to have Thief turn into a Before Midnight-style discussion between a gangster and his dame.

Of course, that's the first scene they'd cut today. You can't have a big genre picture with a lot of talking. James Caan would pull Tuesday Weld out of the bar and then there'd be a hard cut to them having sex. And it wouldn't be James Caan, it'd be someone more conventionally handsome and not so abrasive. And Tuesday Weld would be an actress at least ten years his junior. And there'd have to be a pretty awful bad guy and a recognizable rival cop. Stuff that tests well, you know?

Which just makes Thief all the more intriguing, all the more special. The end of an era of adventurous mainstream filmmaking. We still see movies of a similar stripe crop up occasionally--the films of David O. Russell spring to mind--but not even Michael Mann makes them like this anymore. There’s something fresh and unforced about Thief that his quest for perfection would prevent him from ever recapturing. Moments still pop up here and there--who can forget the sitdown between De Niro and Pacino in Heat--but the fresh excitement of Thief is something you only get to have the first time.

This disc was provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review.