Scooter Chronicles

Marcia and I watched “Raging Bull” this past weekend, starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Cathy Moriarty.

The movie is a bio-pic of the self-destructive former Middleweight Champion Jake LaMotta. Pesci plays his brother Joey and Moriarty plays his wife Vicki.

We wanted to see this for a few reasons. Lately we have been trying to watch a lot of Pacino’s and De Niro’s movies. And most recently, “Raging Bull” was listed on AFI’s site as the third greatest movie of all time. The problem for us was the second of the two reasons kept sticking in our heads. And hype can be an ugly thing. Sure, it was a good movie. De Niro was impressive in another interesting role, doing a great job, and it was amazing to see the amount of weight he put on for the last part of the movie showing LaMotta later in life. And some of the camera angles, as well as shots, that Scorsese directed where interesting. But it didn’t add up to “classic” for us. Again, not a bad movie, and actually quite good. But not top three on either of our lists.

I think of what did it for me was LaMotta himself. There didn’t seem to be a lot of depth in him. For a long period of time in the movie he seemed obsessed with who his wife as looking at, and fighting. How much of an over two hour movie do we need of that? It became painful. But maybe since this was based on his autobiography, maybe that was what LaMotta wanted to hit on, other then his rivalry with Sugar Ray Robinson, or more about what his suspension when he threw a fight meant to him personally.

Again, hype is an ugly thing, and I think it played a part in our attitude towards the movie. But a more interesting look at the subject could have helped, too.