Name That Genre

Be forewarned. This may be my geekiest, most pretentious post to date, and that's saying something.

Yesterday afternoon I was flipping through the channels and stumbled across the opening scene to Raging Bull. Three things struck me.

First, it was startling to see such a young Robert DiNiro.

Secondly, I always want to change the title of Raging Bull to "Ragging Bull" because that is how I saw it misspelled some 15 years ago and I can't get that misspelling out of my head.

And lastly, I was struck by how similar Raging Bull is to other movies like Goodfellas and Boogie Nights. The Horatio Alger story is definitely a cornerstone of American storytelling, but it seems as if there is a darker subgenre, that goes a little something like this:

1. Young male grows up in a broken home in an urban area with little upward mobility.
2. As he comes of age he finds success, fame, lots of women, and fortune in a seedy industry, be it boxing, organized crime, or porn.
3. As the charachter and his career age, he can't let go of his youth. He flies too close to the sun and comes crashing down, aided by a drug and alchohol addiction.
4. He sometimes also has a wife to go along with all of his girlfriends. The wife receives physical and emotional abuse and is a fairly sympathetic charachter.

I only saw it once, but there is a James Cagney movie from the 30s, Public Enemy Number One (no word if Chuck D and Flavor Flav are planning a remake), but even back then this movie had a few of the elements of a darkened Horatio Alger story. Maybe it's the predecessor.

Are there any other movies like this? Is this already a prescribed genre and I am just slow to realize it?

I remember when Boogie Nights came out I told my sister how much it reminded me of Goodfellas. She told me she had read a review of Boogie Nights that said pretty much the same thing and renamed the Marky Mark movie Woodfellas. Funny stuff.