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. Every conversation is an opportunity for one of his foes to underestimate him, and every riposte a potential knockout punch. 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. 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. Throughout Raging Bull, he is regularly referred to as an animal, even if he's only called by his nickname once. An Italian boy raised in the Bronx, La Motta was a force of nature. Jake La Motta was a middleweight fighter whose heyday was the 1940s. 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. You could easily claim that it's the heavyweight champion of all boxing movies, and I don't think I'd argue with you. 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. 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. They are separate from the rest, their own thing. In fact, I don't really consider boxing movies to be sports movies. 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. Please Note: The screengrabs used here are from the standard-definition DVD included in this set, not from the Blu-Ray.

Raging bull black and white