Then DID turn it off after the second. The boxing in this movie is so retardedly unrealistic I couldn't take the movie seriously. The fighters look like bobble head dolls standing their with their hands down taking turns letting their opponent punch them as many times as they can in the face.
How is this movie rated so highly? I'm by no means a purist when it comes to portraying sports on screen, but this was laughably stupid.
yeah, this movie is stupid. DeNiro ONLY gave the best performance in the history of film. lesson one kid, don't judge something unless you watch it entirely. you look very bad if you wonder why everyone likes it, when you only saw less than a third of it......
"Are You Watching Closely?"
PDDennis, you are pretty much correct in the fight scenes being unrealistic. However, its not a boxing film. Just a film about human nature with some boxing in it about a guy who happens to be a boxer which happens to be a great metaphor for what and how he deals with what and who is in his life.
**taking a bang off a whisky bottle** Weve just ran out of wine, what are we going to do about it?
DeNiro ONLY gave the best performance in the history of film.By playing himself, same as usual?
There really ain´t no such thing as a "usual De Niro performance" - or at least wasn´t until about the year 2000.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
No one in the history of film could ever match his performances!
The Deer Hunter
Raging Bull
Taxi Driver
Godfather 2
Casino
King of Comedy
Goodfellas
Once Upon a Time in America
HEAT
Cape Fear
Awakenings
Just to name a FEW!!! lol, the OP is a laughable JOKE!!!!!!!
Very well said.
shareYou should watch the rest of the movie, but I do agree the fight scenes aren't believable.
shareI thought they weren't bad actually. For a movie made in the 70s it was top notch compared to action scenes in any other movie around then. I saw this movie as a drama though so I wasn't really bothered by it not being 100% realistic.
shareIt wasn't SUPPOSED to be "realistic" fight scenes.
They were very artistically rendered. First off, the rings were oversized, and the ropes too, and are much larger than any real rings. This is to facilitate the large camera equipment, so it can be inside the ring and pan and swivel and zoom around. Also, there are times when there is actually FIRE right below the camera lens, so that heat waves and smoke rise up, like being in an inferno. There are also extensive sounds of growling, charging, screaming animals on the soundtrack during the fights. There are also hundreds of quick cuts and jump cuts and freeze frames. It is very stylishly done.
And, as someone else said, it is NOT a sports film or a film about boxing. It is a portrait of a very mean and aggressive man, who is also a human being. He's not someone you'd want to know, but he is still fascinating to watch and you realize that to beat and be beaten for a living, you have to be an animalistic, sadomasochistic, aggressive SOB. That's what's interesting. The guy is ALWAYS a fighter, not just in the ring. You are observing a character study of what makes someone like that tick. He's destructive and self-destructive, and yet, he is not incapable of guilt over his actions. Which is why, after obtaining the title he craved for so long, and then having to defend it against a long time rival, he lowers his hands, on purpose, and lets his long time rival give him one helluva beating AND take his title away. This ends his career, basically. And as he leaves the ring bloody and battered and beaten, the camera pans to the a close-up on the ropes, to show the only way a guy like this knew how to pay for his sins against his loved ones... with the shedding of his blood...
But, yeah, the OP is right. When one watches a "sports" film or a "boxing" film, they want it nice and realistic like, say, Rocky Balboa's movies...(rolling eyes into the back of my head)...
I love RAGING BULL,but you have a lot of nerve putting down ROCKY. Raging Bull isn't in Rocky's class. The FIRST Rocky that is. Why? It has the true benchmarks of a great film. Great score,great story,great acting,great numbers at the box office and a truer ark in the main character. Jake LaMotta shows nothing but rage,but the viewer never sees the reasons behind it. Plus,we don't care for a person like that. Rocky is different. We see his shortcomings but root for him.
shareBigkua, you and I have argued this to death on another thread.
Why does a film, or a film character need to have an arc? This is a prerequisite that you have set up for some reason, but I don't see it written in stone in any art form, or storytelling form at all.
What is the reasoning behind the big bad wolf? Where is the character arc there?
There have been thousands of stories passed down in the history of humanity that don't expect or explain the derelict antagonist. Even if Raging Bull was the first one, it still wouldn't prove the need for a story that included some explained character.
Certain people are ruthless, greedy, selfish, diabolical, passive agressive, dumb, on and on and on. A film doesn't need to offer a roadmap tracking one's mindset.
If you need that, then by all means, keep watching films that lead you along and explain everything for you. That's fine.
But don't castigate the rest of us for enjoying a film where we can make up our own minds.
It's an 80's film. Early eighties.
shareNope. It's from 1980 which is the last year of the decade. The 80s go from 1981 to 1990
shareThankfully, no. The 80s go from 1980-1989, as they should: "Although any period of 10 years is a decade, a convenient and frequently referenced interval is based on the tens digit of a calendar year, as in using "1960s" to represent the decade from 1960 to 1969." (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decade)
The same article makes an exception for ordinally counted decades: "Because the common calendar starts with year 1, its first full decade is the years 1 to 10, the second decade from 11 to 20, and so on.", which may be what you are thinking of.
Counting of most things starts from zero; apparently ordinal decades of the "common calendar" (common era?) are an exception, along with floors of buildings in the USA where the ground floor = floor 1.
another less than film critic who doesnt even watch the whole movie
sharegreatest movie EVER made man..... come on have you seen the first scene with the music in slow-mo and black and white i mean how beautifully directed is that....... that alone is worth sitting through the whole movie
shareI think it was a type of homage to how boxing scenes back in the day looked so unrealistic. Notice how it is also in black and white.
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I totally agree that the fights were NOT supposed to be realistic, but on the other hand, my opinion, was that they could not be totally unrealistic due to the fact that Jake LaMotta was a consultant on the film and during the filming, Plus, LaMotta gave Deniro boxing lessons for the movie
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