Raging Bull

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The most painful and heartrending portrait of jealousy in the cinema--an "Othello'' for our times.

Chicago Tribune Gene Siskel

Filmed in black-and-white and shockingly well acted by De Niro, Raging Bull suggests that if you are looking for the source of evil in the world, you don't have to look any further than yourself. It's inside you or it isn't. And it comes out or it doesn't. [19 Dec 1980]

Entertainment Weekly Steve Daly

Another harsh character study, with poignant echoes of "Taxi Driver."

Los Angeles Times Sheila Benson

One of the bloodiest and most beautiful reflections on atonement in the Scorsese canon... It is still one of cinema's most breathtaking films.

The New York Times Vincent Canby

The entire film is played at such high pitch it may well exhaust audiences that don't come prepared. And, at the heart of the film, there is the mystery of Jake himself, but that is what separates Raging Bull from all other fight movies, in fact, from most movies about anything. Raging Bull is an achievement.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Takes a cold, unflinching look at the violence both inside and outside of the ring.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

A fiercely poetic study of violence. Stunningly shot in black-and-white. [14 Dec 1989, p.23]

TV Guide Staff (Not Credited)

One of the most powerful boxing films ever made.

Austin Chronicle Michael Bertin

The performances are riveting and the visuals are stunning. The boxing sequences are brutally realistic - there are no crappy Rocky theatrics here - and the humanity oozes out of every scene.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

The film that many consider the finest of its decade, Raging Bull, has aged well, and not just because it was filmed in black and white.

Village Voice Amy Taubin

What's most stunning about Raging Bull is the tension between 19th-century melodrama and 20th-century psychodrama, the narrative form brought into being by the conjunction of Freudian theory and the mechanics of the movie camera.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jay Scott

The intensity of the film verges on the intolerable.

Variety Staff (Not Credited)

But the boxing sequences are possibly the best ever filmed, and the film captures the intensity of a boxer's life with considerable force.

Chicago Reader Dave Kehr

As LaMotta, Robert De Niro gives a blank, soulless performance; there's so little of depth or urgency coming from him that he's impossible to despise, or forgive, in any but the most superficial way.