![]() The ring is where Scorsese’s art is most alive, because it is where Jake (Robert De Niro) lives, where he can do battle on equal terms, playing by hard men’s rules. Smoke, sweat, flesh and blood become Jackson Pollock abstractions as they pound home the essential blood lust of those sweet sciences, prizefighting and moviemaking. ![]() The camera muscles into the action, peering from above, from below, from the combatant’s point of view, panning 360° as a doomed fighter spins toward the canvas. ![]() Scorsese layers the sound track with grunts and screams, animal noises that seem to emanate from hell’s zoo. The boxing sequences (which amount to barely a dozen minutes of the movie’s two hours plus) are as violent, controlled, repulsive and exhilarating as anything in the genre. ![]() La Motta was an animal, a bull in the ring and a pig outside, and Scorsese is true to both Jakes. Now 59, this sacred monster is canonized and cauterized in Scorsese’s searing black and white. (from 160) within a year of retiring, was convicted on a morals charge involving a 14-year-old prostitute, and made a comeback of sorts as a road-show Rocky Graziano. He “fought Sugar Ray Robinson so many times I got diabetes.” He played rope-a-dope with the Mob. The Bronx Bull butted his way to the middleweight championship of boxing in 1949. What Jake saw in a nostalgic nightmare, Martin Scorsese has put on the screen.
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