Raging Bull: Limited Edition (4K UHD Review)

Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
Review Date: Aug 25, 2025
Format: 4K Ultra HD

Director

Martin Scorsese

Release Date(s)

1980 (July 2, 2025)

Studio(s)

United Artists (Imprint Films/Via Vision Entertainment)

Film/Program Grade: B+
Video Grade: A+
Audio Grade: B+
Extras Grade: A

viavision.com.au

Review

[Editor’s Note: This is a Region-Free Australian 4K Ultra HD import.]

Martin Scorsese is a filmmaker who has always been attracted to the sordid corners of society in general and the disreputable people who inhabit them in particular. Scorsese’s longtime muse Robert De Niro has shared the same fascination, which is one reason why the two of them were able to collaborate successfully in creating unforgettable characters like Johnny Boy, Travis Bickle, Rupert Pupkin, Jimmy Conway, and Max Cady. It’s also why Scorsese ended up turning to the boxing milieu in 1980 with Raging Bull, despite the fact that he had little to no interest in the sport (or in any other sport, for that matter). De Niro had read former middleweight champion Jake LaMotta’s 1970 memoir Raging Bull: My Story and encouraged Scorsese to adapt it with him, but the director wasn’t willing to take a shot at it until he had bottomed out from a nearly fatal drug-fueled spiral shortly after the failure of New York, New York. Boxing still didn’t interest him, but exploring the deepest depths of the human condition must have been particularly appealing at that point.

It still wasn’t an easy process, however. Mardik Martin took a first pass at the script, but Scorsese ended up bringing in Taxi Driver writer Paul Schrader in order to punch things up a bit. Yet Schrader’s draft still didn’t quite work to either Scorsese or De Niro’s tastes, so they both took an uncredited pass at it as well—and even then, the final shape of the film was restructured significantly during post-production by Scorsese and his editor Thelma Schoonmaker. The results drew generally positive but still somewhat mixed reviews, and it didn’t exactly light up the box office (to be fair, a black-and-white film was a hard sell in 1980), but Raging Bull ultimately garnered eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Director, although it was snubbed for most of the topline awards in favor of Ordinary People. Still, both De Niro and Schoonmaker did take home their own Oscars, and the reputation of the film continued to grow over the years that followed. It wasn’t long before it was widely acclaimed as being one of Scorsese’s greatest films, and most of the criticisms that were leveled against it in 1980 were soon forgotten.

Yet as with many things in life, reality is a bit more complicated than that, and Raging Bull is as complex of a text as mainstream Hollywood filmmaking has ever produced. On the plus side, it’s an astonishingly powerful portrait of a man whose prowess in the ring was matched by his complete inability to be a decent human being outside of it. LaMotta’s self-loathing expressed itself outwardly through his utter contempt for anyone and everyone else in his life, multiple wives included. He was only too willing to use his fists to regain his sense of superiority over others, even against defenseless women. He was also unwilling to take the blame for his own mistakes, which caused him to lash out further, both verbally and physically. It’s a challenging role for an actor to undertake, because LaMotta’s inherent unlikability threatens to make the entire film into a repellent one. Yet De Niro managed to bring depth to the character anyway, giving one of the finest performances of his career and earning his eventual Oscar (although there’s no escaping the fact that the weight that he gained for the role tipped the scales in his favor, so to speak).

Scorsese’s eye for faces hasn’t failed him yet, and the rest of the cast in Raging Bull is equally superb. Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty both made names for themselves as Jake’s brother Joey and his second wife Vickie (and they both earned supporting acting nominations as well). Minor roles are filled out perfectly by the likes of Nicholas Colasanto, Theresa Saldana, Lori Anne Flax, and in what would turn out to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, the inimitable Frank Vincent. The technical merits of Raging Bull are no less impeccable, from Michael Chapman’s stark black-and-white cinematography to Schoonmaker’s editing. Befitting a Martin Scorsese film, the various pieces of source music are perfectly chosen, and even Frank Warner’s sound effects add immeasurably to the impact of the film. Everyone was firing on all cylinders, on both sides of the camera.

Here’s the thing, though: Raging Bull isn’t just an indelible portrait of a man who happens to be a complete louse; it’s a portrait of a complete louse who happens to be a boxer, and that’s where this complex text needs to be assessed with a little more care. Scorsese has freely admitted that he never really understood sports at all, and his lack of insight is clearly visible in the final product. The boxing sequences are all staged, photographed, and edited with his usual panache, but that undeniable flair ends up working against their authenticity. Simply put, Raging Bull may be a great film about a boxer, but it’s not necessarily a great boxing movie.

There’s always been a tension between realism and stylization in Scorsese’s work, and for every film like Goodfellas that nails the perfect balance between the two, there’s an Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore where his stylized camerawork sometimes feels at odds with the naturalistic setting. In Raging Bull, he perfectly re-created the seedy milieu of the boxing world during the Forties and Fifties, where corruption ran rampant and morally corrupt individuals like LaMotta were perfectly at home. Yet every time that LaMotta steps into the ring, it all rings false. The boxing sequences were all filmed on a soundstage, and it looks like one, too. The fight choreography isn’t realistic, and the camera is constantly in places where a camera couldn’t possibly be. Anyone who has ever watched any of LaMotta’s fights will instantly spot where events have been altered for dramatic effect, especially during his final rematch with Sugar Ray Robinson. The tension between the realism of the boxing milieu and the artificiality of the actual boxing is something that’s never quite resolved in Raging Bull.

Now... plenty of people will object to any attempt to yank off that particular Band-Aid, and to be fair, none of it will matter in the slightest to anyone whose experience with boxing is limited to what they’ve seen at the movies. The fights here are no less realistic than any of the hyperbolic matches in Rocky III or Rocky IV, but those films aren’t exactly paradigms of realism in the first place. Yet here’s a hot take for you: the fights in Sylvester Stallone’s criminally underappreciated Rocky Balboa are more realistically staged, choreographed, and photographed than anything in Raging Bull. Does that mean that Rocky Balboa is a better film than Raging Bull? Hardly. Yet it’s still a better boxing movie, even if it isn’t a better film about a boxer. When assessing any complex text, there are layers of nuance that need to be peeled back carefully. Raging Bull remains an unforgettable portrait of the kind of abject social loser that has always fascinated Scorsese and De Niro, and considered narrowly from that perspective, it’s one of their finest hours as collaborators. But as masterpieces of characterizations go, it’s still a flawed masterpiece. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Cinematographer Michael Chapman shot Raging Bull on 35mm film using Arriflex 35BL cameras with Zeiss Super Speed and Cooke Varotal spherical lenses, framed at 1.85:1 for its theatrical release. The home movie footage was shot on standard color 16mm film instead using an Arriflex 16SR camera, with the camera operated by one of the teamsters in order to capture the rough, unpolished home movie look (and then Scorsese went medieval on the negative to further rough it up). Since the entire film was shot on black-and-white Eastman Double-X 5222 and Plus-X 5231, but the home movies and the red Raging Bull title had to be printed on color stock, the black-and-white release prints had those shots hot-spliced into them.

This version uses the same 4K master that was produced for Criterion back in 2022, with the original camera negative scanned at 4K resolution, cleaned up, and graded for High Dynamic Range in HD10 only. The difference here is that Via Vision has added a Dolby Vision grade as well, and everything has been encoded to disc by David Mackenzie at Fidelity in Motion. Criterion’s version already looked outstanding, so there was little room for improvement, but the new encode may indeed wring out a tiny bit more detail, mostly in terms of the grain looking a skosh sharper and less filtered. The catch is that it’s only really visible when looking at screenshots from up close. In motion and at normal viewing distances, you’d never know the difference.

Regardless, this is a reference-quality presentation of Raging Bull. The grayscale, contrast, and black levels are essentially flawless, and the fine details are resolved perfectly. While the fact that it’s a black-and-white film simplifies things a bit, there’s still a lot of challenging material in Raging Bull like smoke and fog, but it’s all handled perfectly by the encode. There’s no damage to speak of aside from some ghosting in the shot at 52:50, but that looks like a camera shutter issue that’s inherent to the elements and couldn’t be fixed. In all other respects, this is as close to perfection as can be achieved by the life story of such a tragically imperfect human being.

Audio is offered in English 2.0 stereo LPCM and 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English SDH subtitles. Raging Bull was released theatrically in Dolby Stereo, and the 5.1 mix is essentially just a discrete encoding of those original four channels (4.0 in a 5.1 container). While it may be a matter of taste, the original 2.0 track sounds superior. What it may lack in channel separation, it more than makes up for it with a better sense of envelopment (once again, always remember to engage your decoder when playing back Dolby Stereo or Ultra Stereo encoded tracks). The results can be a bit overwhelming at times, but that’s purely intentional. The sounds of the punches, crowds, spurting blood, and popping flashbulbs are layered on top of each other in such a way that it can be hard to focus on any one thing. For some people, that creates a problem with dialogue intelligibility, since the sound effects don’t just overwhelm the viewer, they can overwhelm the dialogue as well. (That, plus there’s a whole lotta Brando-esque mumbling going on.) Personally, I’ve never had an issue with it, but some viewers may want to notch up the volume a bit in order to compensate.

Via Vision’s Region-Free Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD release of Raging Bull is #419 in their Imprint Films line. It’s a three-disc set that includes one Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film and a second Blu-ray with the majority of the extras. The film discs are housed in one Amaray case and the extras disc is in its own case. (Neither of the inserts are reversible, but they both have production photographs from the film on other side.) There’s also an 80-page booklet featuring an essay by Bilge Ebiri and reproductions of the production notes from the original pressbook. Everything comes housed in one of Imprint’s rigid Hardboxes that opens up at the top. The following archival extras are included:

DISCS ONE & TWO: FEATURE FILM (UHD & BD)

Audio Commentary by Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker
Audio Commentary by Michael Chapman, Irwin Winkler, Robert Chartoff, Robbie Robertson, John Turturro, Theresa Saladana, Cis Corman, and Frank Warner
Audio Commentary by Mardik Martin, Paul Schrader, Jake LaMotta, and Jason Lustig
Theatrical Trailer (HD – 2:11)

The commentary with Scorsese and Schoonmaker is the oldest of the bunch, dating all the way back to Criterion’s 1990 LaserDisc release of Raging Bull. Like many of their earliest commentaries, it’s a curated track, with the two of them recorded separately and edited together. It’s a fairly comprehensive examination of the conception, shooting, editing, scoring, and release of the film, filled with a wealth of technical information (and quite a few lengthy gaps as well, so caveat emptor).

The other two commentaries were added for MGM’s 2005 DVD release of Raging Bull, and they’re also curated tracks. The first technical commentary features contributions from Michael Chapman, producers Irwin Winkler & Robert Chartoff, music producer Robbie Robertson, casting director Cis Corman, sound effects editor Frank Warner, and actors Theresa Saldana & John Turturro (the latter of whom is surprised to have been invited to participate, given the fact that he’s barely visible in the film). It dives a bit deeper into various aspects about the making of Raging Bull, including more information about the sound design and specifics about the cinematography.

The last commentary features Jake LaMotta paired with his nephew Jason Lustig, intermingled with contributions from writers Mardik Martin and Paul Schrader. It’s more focused on separating fact from fiction in Raging Bull, including how the script evolved from LaMotta’s memoir into something else entirely. Lustig essentially serves as an interviewer for LaMotta, asking him questions in order to keep him focused, while Martin and Schrader speak extemporaneously. LaMotta wasn’t thrilled with the negative way that he was portrayed in the film, but his ex-wife Vikki told him that he was actually much worse.

DISC THREE: EXTRAS (BD)

Raging Bull: Fight Night:
- Before the Fight (SD – 26:01)
- Inside the Ring (SD – 14:45)
- Outside the Ring (SD – 27:24)
- After the Fight (SD – 15:22)
The Bronx Bull: An Introduction to Raging Bull (SD – 27:54)
De Niro vs. LaMotta: Shot for Shot (SD – 3:47)
LaMotta Defends Title (SD – 1:00)
Marty & Bobby (HD – 13:35)
Remembering Jake (HD – 11:04)
Marty on Film (HD – 10:30)
Jake’s Jokes (SD – 6:07)
Trailers from Hell: Dan Perri on Raging Bull (HD – 2:44)

Fight Night is a four-part documentary on the making of Raging Bull that was produced for MGM’s 2005 DVD. Written and directed by Laurent Bouzereau, it features interviews with Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Cathy Moriarty, Frank Vincent, Mardik Martin, Paul Schrader, Robert Chartoff, Irwin Winkler, Michael Chapman, Thelma Schoonmkaer, and Frank Warner. Before the Fight covers the pre-production phase, from the origins of the project to the protracted writing process and the casting. Scorsese acknowledges that it was challenging to interest producers in a black-and-white film about a character who seemed like a “cockroach.” Inside the Ring focuses on choreographing and shooting the fight sequences. Outside the Ring details the rest of the shoot, from improvisation to the differing approaches of each of the actors, including De Niro’s legendary weight gain for the role. After the Fight drills down to the post-production, release, and legacy of Raging Bull.

The Bronx Bull: An Introduction to Raging Bull is more of a retrospective look at Raging Bull, originally produced for the Region 2 DVD from MGM in the U.K. It includes interviews with Jake LaMotta and Thelma Schoonmaker, as well as critics Ian Nathan, Derek Malcolm, and Ben Ollins. It mixes LaMotta and Schoonmaker’s perspectives on the film with critical appraisals. Jake’s Jokes, also from the same disc, is a collection of LaMotta telling six different jokes.

Marty & Bobby, Remembering Jake, and Marty on Film were all added for the 2011 30th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray release of Raging Bull. Marty & Bobby focuses on the partnership between the two, featuring interviews with Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, and Irwin Winkler. Remembering Jake is footage from a gathering of members of the Veteran Boxers Association at the Crabhouse in Queens, where they reminisce about LaMotta. Marty on Film offers Scorsese going solo to discuss his feelings about the film medium in general.

The remaining extras include De Niro vs. LaMotta: Shot for Shot, which contrasts the real LaMotta with De Niro’s version, although for the most part, it isn’t really a shot-by-shot comparison. LaMotta Defends Title is a brief selection from a Movietone newsreel of LaMotta’s 1950 match against Laurent Dauthuille. Finally, there’s a Trailers from Hell with original title designer Dan Perri. It’s actually one of the most interesting extras on the disc, since Perri breaks down the process of creating the blood red Raging Bull title on color stock and hot splicing it into all 75 prints that were distributed in 1980—and the issue that the splices created for projectionists.

That’s everything of note from previous MGM releases except for the featurette Raging Bull: Reflections on a Classic and a 1980 The Tonight Show appearance by Cathy Moriarty. There are also a few things missing from Criterion’s 2022 UHD release of Raging Bull. They added two visual essays: Pour Everything In by critic Geoffrey O’Brien and Gloves Off by Sheila O’Malley. They also included a 1981 Belgian television interview with Cathy Moriarty, a 1990 interview with Jake LaMotta, and audio-only excerpts of De Niro at a 1980 American Film Institute seminar. On the other hand, Criterion didn’t include The Bronx Bull: An Introduction to Raging Bull, De Niro vs. LaMotta: Shot for Shot, LaMotta Defends Title, Jake’s Jokes, or the Trailers from Hell. (They also didn’t include Reflections on a Classic or the interview from The Tonight Show.) So, from an extras perspective, neither UHD is all-inclusive.

Still, Via Vision has assembled a helluva collection of extras for their own release, with better packaging, too. The video and audio quality are as good as they possibly can be. In the balance, this is probably the best release of Raging Bull to date. Yet there’s nothing wrong with Criterion’s set, so whether or not to upgrade is up to you. If you need to have the very best version of a mildly flawed film about a tremendously flawed boxer, then Via Vision’s version is the one to own.

-Stephen Bjork

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