The Bronx Bull (2017)

Boring, long, and too preachy.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

This is a biopic of Middle Weight Champion of the World, Jake Lamotta who fought from 1941-1954. The film opens up with his testimony to congress under the Kennedy years and flashes back to his teens when he first became a fighter. It then jumps to 1967, 68, then 1982, skipping the whole reason why he was famous.Most of the film takes place after his retirement. It shows a man attempting to avoid working for the mob while having all mob friends. He lived his life with two regrets: The kid he killed as an amateur and the fight he threw to Billy Fox.The acting was great. William Forsythe was convincing even through that transition from teen actor playing him , to his adult self wasn't smooth because the younger self didn't look nothing like William Forsythe.Story about a boxer without much boxing.Guide: F-word. Stripper nudity.

The story line advanced here on IMDb for this picture states that "The Bronx Bull" chronicles his (Jake LaMotta) rise as a world class boxer and his struggles with life outside the ring. That would only be half right, LaMotta's rise as a world class boxer isn't touched on at all in this largely disjointed film about the former Middleweight Champion. That job is handled a lot better in Martin Scorsese's 1980 epic film "Raging Bull". Undoubtedly the 'Bull' connotation in the title is utilized to draw an audience for this film, but if you're like me, you'll be left unrewarded for the effort of tuning in to the picture.It starts out interestingly enough, with LaMotta (William Forsythe) testifying before a Congressional Committee investigating the influence of organized crime in boxing, but aside from that brief scene, nothing ever comes of it. That right there would probably be a topic worthwhile enough to devote an entire picture to. Instead, the story takes a twenty year flashback to LaMotta's troubled youth, and a father (Paul Sorvino) who abused his son both physically and emotionally in order to experience some vicarious pleasure in seeing him beat people up.From there on, the story moves forward in time through some of LaMotta's failed marriages and a dysfunctional relationship with childhood friend Rick Rosselli (Joe Mantegna), who's career high point seems to have taken him to making porno flicks. I have to say, as bad as this flick was, I'm intrigued enough to go out and get my hands on a copy of "Cauliflower Cupids" that was teased in this picture. It scores lower than "The Bronx Bull" by IMDb viewers, but it's got the real life Jake LaMotta in it, along with Sugar Ray Robinson, Willie Pep, and Tony Zale, with Jane Russell at the top of the bill. I say it's worth a look.Well there's not much to recommend here, the story plays like a poorly written soap opera despite the caliber of some of the principal players. William Forsythe in particular does a fine job in portraying the title character, it's just that there's not much here to work with. Perhaps the biggest shocker for this viewer occurred when I went to look up the stats on Jake LaMotta himself here on IMDb, and discovered that the former boxer is still alive at ninety six years old as I write this! That's a knockout punch I didn't see coming.Addendum**** It's just two days since I posted this review, and learned this morning that Jake LaMotta passed away yesterday, 9/19/2017. Another knockout punch no one saw coming. Rest in peace, Jake LaMotta.

I watched this movie that had some fairly well known actors in it and you would think it was their first role, the acting was so awful and wooden it beggars belief, the directing and producing was also equally awful, this had the potential to be so much better and it fails on every front, the story is all over the place, it jumps from one gap in Lamotta's life to another without bringing any of the parts to a meaningful conclusion, in the end you just give up with trying to follow it and feel like one of Lamotta's opponents, thoroughly demoralized and beaten.2 out of 10, don't bother watching, Go and re-watch De niro's raging bull

The timeline is all over the place giving extremely vague details about what happened between the his boxing career. Very depressing, which is fine. Yet, with exceedingly poor attempts to be uplifting. This movie is more about making the audience pity a washed up drunk who doesn't turn his life around until his late 50's and still this film fails to tell that story. The courtroom scene leads you to believe it's a story about a boxer who got mixed up with the mafia, but then never really delves back into that plot. This is the most poorly told biography I've ever seen in film, it was trying to reach a multitude of platforms to express the life of an ex Middle Weight Champion and utterly disappoints on every one of those fronts. Spare yourself of this 94 minute waste of time, 94 minutes I wish I could have back.