Raging Bull

About the film

Contains story spoilers.

After the opening image of Jake LaMotta shadowboxing in a ring, the film finds him rehearsing in a dressing room, then moves back to his early career in the Bronx. Jake is a gifted middleweight who refuses to let the Mafia arrange a title opportunity for him, insisting on winning without a favor. His brother Joey understands how the boxing business works and tries to negotiate openings, creating a partnership that combines family loyalty with practical management. Jake’s first losses and rematches establish his toughness, but the same possessiveness that fuels him in the ring begins to govern his private life.

Jake notices Vickie at a neighborhood swimming pool and begins pursuing her while still married to another woman; Vickie is fifteen. As she grows older, they marry, but his attention turns into suspicion. A casual comment that opponent Tony Janiro is handsome triggers Jake’s jealousy, and he brutalizes Janiro in the ring while Vickie watches. At the Copacabana, Joey sees Vickie talking with Salvy Batts and confronts her; the conflict spills outside, drawing the attention of mob boss Tommy Como. The club scene ties Jake’s family life to the same men who control the path to the championship.

Como tells Jake that he must lose a fight to Billy Fox if he wants a title shot. Jake takes the dive badly: he cannot convincingly pretend to lose, the crowd boos him and boxing authorities suspend him. When he returns, he wins the middleweight title by defeating Marcel Cerdan. The victory arrives through his own ability, but the compromise and humiliation remain part of the path. In the ring he can absorb punishment and keep advancing; at home he reads ordinary gestures as evidence of betrayal, turning his power against Vickie and Joey rather than confronting the insecurity that drives him.

Jake’s paranoia peaks when he asks Joey whether he has slept with Vickie. Joey leaves in anger, and Vickie answers Jake’s repeated questions with a sarcastic list of men, which he takes literally. Jake strikes Vickie, then storms into Joey’s home and assaults him in front of his family. Jake and Vickie later reconcile, but the damage to the brothers’ relationship persists. The attack destroys the working partnership as well as the family relationship, leaving Jake without the person who had mediated between his temper and the business around him.

After defending his title, Jake tries to telephone Joey but cannot bring himself to speak, and the attempt fails. His boxing career then declines, and he loses the championship to Sugar Ray Robinson in their final encounter. By 1956 he is heavier, retired and running a nightclub in Miami. Vickie asks for a divorce and full custody of the children, warning him away from them. Jake faces a criminal case involving underage girls and men at his club and attempts to raise money from the jewels in his championship belt, a humiliating reversal for someone who once treated the belt as proof of worth. After serving time, he returns to New York and awkwardly embraces Joey, who only partly returns the gesture.

In the later frame, Jake performs as a nightclub comic, preparing backstage by shadowboxing and reciting lines from a film. The image returns to the opening posture, but now the ring has been replaced by a cramped dressing room and an audience he cannot dominate. Scorsese’s black-and-white photography makes the boxing scenes feel distinct from ordinary space: spotlights, smoke, ropes and shifting camera positions turn each bout into a subjective storm. Between fights, the violence is quieter and more damaging, expressed through arguments, suspicion and family ruptures. The film is adapted from LaMotta’s memoir, but its concentrated structure follows Jake’s self-destructive behavior rather than offering a complete sports biography.

The screenplay is credited to Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin, with Robert De Niro and Scorsese also working on dialogue and characterization during development. The film’s editing and sound create a rhythm that moves from the ritual of training to sudden physical impact; classical music and popular songs mark the changing periods of Jake’s life. Those choices do not soften the protagonist or turn the ring into a straightforward redemption story. Instead, boxing becomes the place where his aggression has boundaries and witnesses, while his home life offers no such rules. By the final scenes, he is still rehearsing a performance, looking for a way to stand before others without knowing how to repair what he broke.

Michael Chapman’s photography and Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing make the fights feel different from the apartments and clubs around them. The ring can isolate Jake inside ropes, flashes and smoke, with abrupt changes in distance making a bout feel larger than its physical space. Brief color home-movie passages offer a different image of the families, catching public celebration and togetherness that the surrounding scenes complicate. Joe Pesci’s Joey can answer Jake’s intensity with speed and irritation rather than calm instruction; Cathy Moriarty’s Vickie must navigate attention that repeatedly turns accusatory. None of their performances gives Jake the final authority to explain what happened between them. His later mirror rehearsal remains a performance he controls, after so many real conversations have ended in harm or silence.