I'm not quite as enthralled with Raging Bull as I was years ago. Mostly because it is a pretty stark depiction of a violent man. However, Raging Bull still holds up as a great movie.
Anyway, I threw The Bronx Bull into my Netflix as queue filler, not expecting much. And not much is exactly what I got.
I will say The Bronx Bull did make a smart choice in avoiding the years of LaMotta's that Raging Bull covered. To try and remake Raging Bull would have been foolish. Thus, The Bronx Bull storyline concentrates partly on LaMotta's pre-professional boxing years and largely on LaMotta's life from the 1960's through the 1980's.
With Raging Bull, the production spent a visible amount of time and money recreating New York City circa late 1940's through the early 1950's, with plenty of location shooting. The Bronx Bull fails to capture any of the flavor of NYC because many of the exterior shots look like they were filmed on non-descript studio backlots.
Raging Bull also kept the scope small in terms of the characters. The story concentrated the focus on Jake LaMotta, his second wife Vikki and his brother Joey. As a result, the viewer became invested in these three characters and what happened to them. The Bronx Bull has LaMotta interacting with a dozen plus secondary characters, each for 5 minutes here or 10 minutes there. The focus is so spread out you barely have time get acquainted with any of these people as they flow through LaMotta's life, much less care about them. In addition, while The Bronx Bull is populated with a lot of cast members I have enjoyed in many other things, virtually all of them are way past their prime, few of them are even trying in terms of the acting and all are clearly coasting here for a paycheck.
Beyond all this is the story The Bronx Bull has chosen to tell. Granted, Jake LaMotta as portrayed in Raging Bull was a very violent, bleak persona. Perhaps that's how LaMotta really was in real life. However, with Raging Bull, you had the characters of Vikki and Joey (along with the great performances of Cathy Moriarty and Joe Pesci, not forgetting DeNiro as LaMotta back before DeNiro stopped trying and began coasting for a paycheck) along with the wonderfully filmed fight scenes in addition to the location shots. The Bronx Bull largely tells the story of LaMotta post-boxing, depicting him as a still-violent, charmless drunken has-been. Perhaps that's also how LaMotta was in real life after his boxing career ended, but not compelling as the subject of a movie. Particularly since the after the fall period of LaMotta's life had already been touched upon at the end of Raging Bull.
William Forsythe gives a one-note performance as LaMotta, a performance which adds nothing to how LaMotta was portrayed by DeNiro in Raging Bull. I'm assuming The Bronx Bull was made for RedBox or direct-to-streaming. It certainly doesn't come across as a movie with a decent budget. Even within those parameters, the flick just plods along to no particular effect. Forgettable and unnecessary.
