These are two epochal films from the late 1970s and early 1980s. Both are about boxing, the popularity of the genre being explained by the fact that the legendary Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali had marked new highs in his career in that decade and brought the curtains down with a 1980 World Boxing Association heavyweight championship.
For their respective lead stars, the two films meant vastly different things. Sylvester Stallone had had a dozen-odd, largely-uncredited bit roles before hitting pay dirt with Rocky I. The script that Stallone wrote himself (after watching an Ali-Chuck Wepner bout) became a breakthrough box office and critical success, launching three sequels and the five-film Rambo series as well. To date, Stallone remains fourth in the all-time actor rankings for money earned. Robert de Niro was also prime mover for “Raging Bull” since he and director Martin Scorsese initiated scriptwriting after the former had gone through the memoirs of 1949-51 World Middleweight champion Jake Lamotta. And there the comparison ends. For De Niro, “Raging Bull” was just one more achievement in a stellar career that had started with getting noticed in “Bang the Drum Slowly” (1973), followed during that decade by “Mean Streets”, an award-winning supporting role in “The Godfather: Part II”, “Taxi Driver”, and “The Deer Hunter”.
Though both films are about boxing heroes, their treatment of violence is very distinct. Violence inside the ring is central to “Rocky I” and its sequels because the film is, after all, an inspiring saga of how the downtrodden and disadvantaged in society are handed a once-in-a-lifetime chance at vanquishing their betters. If proving his mettle means stoically enduring cuts in a recreational boxing gym (as at the start of the movie), undergoing a Spartan training regimen, running the gauntlet of lower-ranked fighters, landing body blows and drawing blood all the way and finally absorbing brutal punishment in the championship, then so be it. This is theme of Everyman enduring to win in the end and finally earning the respect and admiration of family and friends.
In “Raging Bull,” boxing is simply the job LaMotta did during a decade-long career in the ring. The sport is merely a backdrop to the champion’s biography, albeit LaMotta did compile a devastating record of 30 knockouts and 53 more wins between 1941 and 1951. Noteworthy, too, is the “Raging Bull” nickname springing from LaMotta’s “bullying” style of staying close to his opponents and rolling with the blows just so he could throw a barrage of punishing ones himself. “Raging” is, of course, a reference to the deep-seated anger of LaMotta’s. In reality, therefore, the film is gritty and raw for being realistic about life outside the ring and after the hurrahs were but a distant memory. The viewer can be upset by the dramatics of a champion who drank and caroused heavily, did drugs perhaps, and beat up his wife relentlessly on suspicion of cheating on him. Because this domestic abuse is really the central drama of the movie, the violence in “Raging Bull” is sordid and downright depressing.
As this comparative exposition shows, graphic and gratuitous violence is central to the Rocky I (as well as the entire Rocky and Rambo series in fact) saga of triumphing over long odds and formidable opposition. In “Raging Bull,” we are treated to a hero with feet of clay and who lashed out at those closest to him. Drama artfully depicted made the film one of the best of the 1980s.