The movie stars Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Cathy Moriarty. The movie was based on a biographical novel written by Jake LaMotta (published in 1970), with the biography based on his life - primarily about his life from being a young teenager, reform, his life as a boxer (and his fights with the mafia about trying to get the main title), his jealousy over his wife Vickie; it is also about his attitude, and also about the strong relationship with his brother Jeoy. The story was adapted by Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin for the movie, that was eventually directed by Martin Scorsese and released in 1980.
The movie is a great black and white portrayal of the life of the boxer, Jake LaMotta. The movie was so popular with critics (after an initial mixed reception) due to its brutal portrayal of Jake’s tormented life, going off into violent temper tantrum, suspecting his young wife Vicki, even with his own brother. His temper and attitude also moves his away from his own family. Robert De Niro is able to portray this incredibly, including showing the puzzlement he faces when he is not able to control his own temper tantrums, nor understand why they occur; the impact of these tantrums are very destructive for him.

The movie got such critical acclaim that it was nominated for 8 Oscars, and won 2 Academy Awards. The event was overshadowed by the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagen by John Hinckley Jnr, attempting to do a ‘Taxi Driver’ stunt of trying to impress Jodie Foster. Over a period of time, the movie got much more support from critics, being rated among the top movies of all time; definitely the best movie of 1980, and among Martin Scorcese’s best movies. The Oscars for which the movie was nominated were Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Cinematography, Sound and Editing; the movie finally picked up the Oscar for Best Actor (DeNiro) and Best Editing (Schoonmaker).
The movie starts in flashback, where a much heftier Jake LaMotta (Robert DeNiro put on 50 kilos for this part of the role, after training to bring himself to a boxer’s peak physical condition for the early part of the role) is practicing his comedian’s act in 1964. And then the movie moves onto the meatier part of the role, to 1941 where Jake is into his boxing career, aided by his brother Joey who is a sparring partner as well as the organizer of his fights. The movies takes us through the fights he has, the fights that his brother has on his behalf, the wooing of his wife as a young adult upto the point where he becomes paranoid and accuses her of cheating on him. You really need to see the movie to feel the power of the movie.

When one thinks of the Winter Olympics, one would think of countries that have a lot of mountains, snow and ice; with a lot of winter games. So you would think of European countries, the United States, Canada, and so on. Thinking of tropical countries or countries that are essentially sun and beach destinations are not ones that typically come to mind when you think of sports such as skiing, sledding, or bob-sledding. This movie thus is a major surprise to those who see it for the first time - it takes a team from Jamaica (a major tropical paradise), and takes their entry into the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada in the bob-sledding competition. But just an entry into the bob-sledding competition is not worthy of a movie, it is their amazing ambition, their panache, their dogged persistence and their almost pulling off a major surprise.

The movie is not fully accurate, there are some differences between what actually happened and the depiction on the screen; however, the movie is somewhat of a good representation of the events. The movie starred the late John Candy in the major role of Irving (”Irv”) Blitzer, a former American bobsled double gold medallist at the 1968 Winter Olympics who was disgraced after being disqualified in 1972, and who retired to Jamaica. The movie was distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, and went onto be a major commercial success; it cost around $14 million to make and went onto earn more than $150 million worldwide.
The movie seems to start at incredulity, when a Jamaican 100m sprinter Derice Bannock (Leon Robinson) failed to make it for the team for the Summer Olympics (due to a mistake by another contestant Junior Bevil (Rawle D. Lewis)), and approaches Irv for coaching to setup a Jamaican bobsledding team for the Winter Olympics. The first half of the movie is about this coaching regime for the first 3 months, including their initial failures and disappointment; however, they soon start to bond together as a team.
The second half of the movie is about the team in the Olympics; they face scorn and ridicule for their attempt. This is reinforced when they appear last in the first day trials in the actual Olympics. However, they appear fired up on the second day, and start surprising people with a much improved performance, ending up in eighth place. On the final day, they are like world champions, almost ending up with a record performance, however their borrowed sled falls apart a few meters from the finish. Unfazed, and with their spirits high, they carry their sled and walk across the finishing lines to the cheers of spectators.

One book that I have liked a lot is a book by Dick Francis called ‘Rat Race’. Now Dick Francis is an odd bird. He writes almost solely on horse-racing, but he writes good stuff. He was a champion jockey in the 50’s, and has written a number of books ever since.
One of the books of his that I really like is called ‘Rat Race’ (written in 1971). It is not a very complicated plot, but does involve horse racing to some degree (although tangentially). It is about a small-time divorced pilot who is not doing so well in life. He is almost perpetually broke, has to pay regular alimony to his wife, and works for a small charter airline where the owner wants to keep him down. He meets all kind of passengers on the way, many of whom look down on him.
With this background, the story starts escalating. One day when carrying a group to a race-track including a famous jockey, he senses danger and lands, only to see the plane explode a few minutes later. He starts investigating, even when dealing with the repurcussions of this explosion. He meets the family of the famous jockey, and gets romantically interested in his sister, and the sister feels the same. This part of the story is really an excellent sub-plot. The other sister of the jockey is terminally ill, and the way that the family is dealing with the upcoming loss and the resulting grief is an inspired piece of writing. One cannot but help feeling impressed with their courage and ability to handle grief.
The novel moves towards the investigation coming to a peak, with some inspired detective work from the pilot. In addition, the way that the love story between these two moves along with the plot is interesting. The last few pages is when the story climaxes. It is a good read.

This movie was a surprise, a total million-to-one hit when it was released in 1976. Imagine a struggling Italian-American wannabe star by the name of Sylvestor Stallone, who gets inspired by a boxing match that he saw in 1975 between the super boxing champion Mohammed Ali and a challengerChuck Wepner (whose major claim to fame is battling through a full 15 rounds with Ali and knocking him down once). Stallone writes a script and gets a studio to take a look at the script. Well, wonders of wonders, the studio and a pair of producers like the script and offer to buy it from him. And then Stallone springs the surprise, he wants to play the lead role. Imagine an unknown actor who had also starred in a soft-porn movie earlier wanting to play a role that the studio was wanting to offer to one of the macho stars. However, Stallone held out and got the chance of his life, although with a low-budget movie (the movie was so low budget that some of Stallone’s family members including his dad and wife played cameo roles in the movie); The movie cost only around $2.1 million to make, and was an incredible hit, making more than $100 million and making the Italian-American a superstar. And then the Oscars came in. The movie won 3 Oscars (including the most prestigious ones of Best Picture, Best Director and Best Editing; it received a total of 10 Oscar nominations).

The movie was the embodiment of the American dream; work hard, have pride in yourself, catch all the chances you can, put your heart into it, and you will make good. If you watch the movie and see the slow transformation, the scenes of training and the extra-ordinary hard work needed to be able to reach a stage where the challenge to the world boxing champion can seem realistic, then you will realize how appealing the movie actually is. In addition, the shy romance in the movie seems so natural. The music (by Bill Conti) is a perfect accompaniment to the movie, given how it matches the tone of the movie, hitting the emotional chords when required, and matching the hard physical training scenes in the movie. Further, to illustrate how realistic the fight was supposed to be, both Stallone and Weathers suffered injuries during the shooting of the fight scenes from the actual punches thrown. Together, all these factors seemed to come together and made the movie a big hit.
The movie is all about the sudden chance offered to a young man (Rocky Balboa) who is doing a routine job as a loan-collector for a loan shark and also a boxer, and the offer of a chance against the reigning boxing champion is the chance that seems to come once in a lifetime. He grabs the chance, rationalizing that even though the champion is the better boxer and will almost certainly win, it will be a victory for Rocky if he can stay with the champion till the end and not be knocked out early enough. This is his ambition, his driving force in the boxing match. In other ways, he is a normal young man, in love with the sister Adrian (Talia Shire) of his friend Paulie (Burt Young), and the blossoming of the romance is another strong point of the movie, treated by the director with a soft note compared to the hard physical tone of the movie.
The reigning boxing champion of the world, Apollo Creed (played by Carl Weathers, who played a part in all the Rocky movies till Rocky IV) has an important fight coming up, with the fight scheduled for the New Year’s Day of 1976, celebrating 200 years of the American Revolution. (If you know about the boxing world, you will realize the amount of money and prestige staked on these major clashes). However, his opponent has to drop out due to injury, and after looking around, Creed picks up Rocky Balboa to be his match. As in the real life match, everybody decrees that this is a terribly mismatched fight, except for Rocky who sees this as the path out of his current life. In real life, the boxer Chuck Wepner is always known as the boxer who managed to make Muhammed Ali go the full round, and so it was in the movie. Rocky is coached by a crusty old trainer Burgess Meredith (who is a former boxer himself, and sees in Rocky the chance to live his own dream). The selection of Meredith for this character was a very good choice, and you can only watch and wonder as this hard-nosed trainer transforms the rough Rocky into a gem, capable of standing against the world champion, and even knock him down. For what happens in the final fight, you really should watch it yourself. You won’t regret it.