Paul Thomas Anderson originally offered the part of Dirk Diggler, the well-endowed star of his porn opus, Boogie Nights, to Leonardo DiCaprio. DiCaprio turned it down and instead took the lead in another movie about something very big: James Cameron's bloated, overreaching history of the world's largest metaphor, the HMS Titanic. That was a bad thing. DiCaprio's career sank almost as fast as the ill-fated ocean liner. After 1997, he starred in a string of movies that no one saw. Remember The Beach? Me neither.

It's a good thing then, that Martin Scorsese came along. After all these years, Marty is still a hell of a director and he gave Leo a second shot by casting him in Gangs of New York and in his now Oscar nominated performance as Howard Hughes in The Aviator.

Scorsese did the same for a young guy named Robert DeNiro, plucking him out of b-roles in b-movies and turning him into a haunting force of nature on the screen. Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Casino. These are the collective legacy of Bobby DeNiro and Marty Scorsese. Films that seduce you, fuck with you and then gut you while you're sleeping it off. Oh yeah, there's also Raging Bull.

Raging Bull. The piece de resistance in two careers that define American cinema from 1970 on --it's no accident that Paul Thomas Anderson names Scorsese as a key influence. Raging Bull is proof that Scorsese knows how to use his camera like a weapon. Proof that, at his best, DeNiro is the human equivalent of a clenched fist. Watching him play Jake LaMotta, the burnt out has been at the center of Raging Bull is like looking down the barrel of a loaded gun. It's exhilarating and terrifying.