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Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: De Niro...speaks for it's self.
Review: Martin Scorsese's 'Taxi Driver' is a most graphic and harrowing tale of loneliness and its effect on the human psyche.
Robert De Niro, the most versatile and talented actor ever in my opinion, plays Travis a man so plagued with insomnia he turns to taxi driving to while away the late hours.
In a job not usually associated with isolation, Travis, a misanthrope, feels a sense of solitude that is almost inexplicable. A man who finds it impossible to articulate his feelings, the slow degenerative process of rationalisation leads him to question his very being. With so much time to think, sickened at the state of New York City, Travis sees an opportunity to be someone - a self appointed bringer of justice.
This is not a pleasant film. In fact, it's the ugly tale of a man's sedulous quest for purpose culminating in extreme, explicit violence.
It's a frightening, grim and true-to-life film; an historic monument in cinematography, but those of a nervous disposition may prefer to give it a miss.

In respect to the actual DVD, it, like most DVDs is impressive. The 70 minute documentary that compliments it, gives a clear insight into the mind of the director and his motives for being involved in such a controversial movie.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: taxi driver
Review: Amazing!one of the most vivid and powerful films of all time,an inspiring masterpiece of cinimatic gold.travis bickle,the main character,is a lonely taxi who had insomnia,so he takes a late night taxi driving job to help him sleep.as he drives around the streets of new york,hes disgusted by the slime of the city,the prostitutes,junkies,and just everyone.he one day meets a still teenage prostitute named iris,who was a runaway and and trying to survive.hthat just drives him crazy,he has put up with to much for to long.one night he decides to make a stand,so he goes on a murderous rampage through a building of pimps,taking out at least three.it turns out he came out a hero,congragulated for taking down and battling the gang of pimps.an amazingly intaligent movie with its hard hitting realism.now i dont mean to give away the plot but i am only 12 but a huge enthusiest of this film and its director.so in so many words those who feel suffocated by the problems of everyday life this is a movie for you.buy it,watch it and then hopefully you wont feel so suffocated.hell, you'll probably feel better.but whatever your mood is buy this film. its highly reccomended to those who have a boundryless appreciation for hard hitting real life cinema.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great misunderstood movie
Review: Taxi Driver is infamous for its violence and its connection with the John Hinkley attempt on Reagan. Its also famous for starring a young Jodie Foster as a prostitute. However, the real driving force in all of this is one man's loneliness and alienation. Travis Bickle is a young frustrated alienated man. At the beginning of the film Travis is lonely, then when he meets Betsy (gorgeous young Cybil Shepherd) he feels that there is hope for him. One memorable quote is: "I believe one should become like other people". He's probably thinking that he can have a significant relationship with Betsy, marriage family perhaps. Unfortunately all that is destroyed when Travis takes Betsy to a porno movie on their first date. Travis is so socially clueless that he has no idea that this is offensive to a girl like Betsy. Afterwards he tries to make up with calls and flowers which are all ignored. That starts Travis' madness. At first his plan is to assasinate the political candidate that Betsy is working for, in an attempt to perhaps get back at Betsy. WIth that plan gone awry Travis turns to saving teen hooker Iris(Foster) from her pimps. A bloody gory battle that is an incredible climax. So potential policitical assasin Travis turns into heroic vigilante who frees teen victim. The movie can easily be interpreted as a violent nonsensical film by people who don't understand what it is to be lonely. But for the millions out there who do understand, Taxi Driver is an incredible unforgettable film.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "Loneliness has followed me my whole life,..
Review: ...Everywhere, in bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere, theres no ecscape, I'm God's lonely man."---Travis Bickle

"Taxi Driver" remains for me the best piece of work by Martin Scorsese. Stripped of the pretense of "Raging Bull" and the stylized atmosphere of "GoodFellas", "Taxi Driver" is a unashamedly honest look at New York city and its effects on a mentally unstable Vietnam veteran. Often uneasy to watch but amazingly and utterly compelling, "Taxi Driver" launched Martin Scorsese into the pantheon of great directors.

Set in modern day (1976) New York, the story centres around Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), a 26 year-old ex Vietnam veteran. He is shy, dispossesed and utterly alone. He frequents porn theatres, yet is repulsed by the 'filth' he sees on the streets. Unable to sleep at night, Travis becomes a taxi driver, working long shifts with little or no sleep.Through his nightly experiences as a cab driver, Travis becomes even more bitter and confused. Bernard Herrmann's impecible theme aurates Travis' battle between what he thinks he should stand against and what actually arouses him. In fact, the theme music is perhaps the second most important character in the film, acting as a metaphor for the daily downward spiral of Travis' mental state. In his solitude Travis lets the drudgery and depressive nature of his job burrow inside his mind. He falls for an angelic WASP named Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) and even manages to take her out on a date. But his complete lack of nuance for the real world ends up with any chance of a burgeoning romance left in tatters.
What makes Travis' journey into madness even more compelling is the portrayl of the character by Robert De Niro. As the film progresses, De Niro's fractured performance is so real, you almost feel he really is Travis Bickle, even now some 25 years since the film's release. De Niro's best scenes are when he is trying to interact with 'normal' people, like his cab driver friends, or his confrontations with Tom (Albert Brooks) - a co-worker of Betsy. The way De Niro is one step removed from these and all the other characters in the movie is a feat he has not matched since. The script by Paul Schrader is also superb. The film shifts from centering on Travis' insecurity, to his misguidance and eventually to his role as a psychotic vigilante. The dialogue is superb and each character is shaped perfectly. The film also makes use of its many smaller, but no less important roles, such as Sport the Pimp (Harvey Keitel), Wizard the cabbie (Peter Boyle), Tom and Iris (Jodie Foster). All of these characters display an on screen presence that is rarely matched by other supporting cast members.


Holding it altogether is Scorsese. New York has never looked sleazier or grimier. "Taxi Driver" works because Scorsese never lets the film slip in any way. Movie buffs will recognise many small homages to different directors, but even the casual viewer will feel nailed to their seat as the walls within Travis' mind creep further and further in. A true feat of modern film making and a study in paranoia that may never be bettered, "Taxi Driver" is an important chapter in American film and one that requires repeat viewings despite its difficult and uneasy vibe. A modern classic without question.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Grade: A+ 100%

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of te best pictures.
Review: Martin Scorsese's second collaberation out of eight with Robert DeNiro is probably the most memorable. DeNiro is Paul Schraders'
Character Loneley Travis Bickle. DeNiro brings on a his soft mood performance in the first half of the film and then after the first half it really lights up. Oh and by the way if you buy the special collectors edition you would know that the famous mirror scene " You Talkin to me" was improvised by Robert DeNiro not in the original scrpt. Travis takes Betsy a girl who works for the Senators cmpaign on a date. After an awful night at the movies Travis goes in and tries to talk to her about why she wasn't returning his calls. Everything is going miserable until something intresting happens. Harvey Kietel ad Jodi Foster are introduced and Foster is being harrassed. He finally realizes that He can't take this anymore. After Getting advice from old buddy Wizard(played by Peter Boyle) He goes and gets his own collection of firearms. He then finds the people that are harrasing Jodie Foster and realizes that He's inlove with her.
Directed by Martin Scorsese

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I Loved This Movie
Review: Martin Scorsese's colorful masterpiece is one of the best films of the 70'es and one of Robert De Niro best films. This film may turn off some do to the violence. But for people who like strong stomic drama's this is a film for you. The DVD is very good and the picture and sound are perfect.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the best movies ever made, bar none
Review: All the so called 'hype' this movie has generated is warranted and then some:nothing quite compares to it. Something, to put it mildly, just went right. The claustraphobic atmosphere of meaninglessness, alienation and pure depravity that Scorsese creates is nothing less than perfect. The all consuming glow of streetlamps, traffic signals and headlights allow us to see New York City as Travis sees it, a crowded hell where human being is separated from human being and 'survival of the fittest' is the brutal norm. De Niro's performance is beyond exceptional, it is transcendent. He absolutely becomes Travis Bickle, a very lost and lonely young war veteran in a city full of people who seem to be asleep. For all intents and purposes, Robert De Niro no longer exists within the running time of this movie:indeed, he so good as Travis that he is sometimes much more frightening than the 'scum', like Harvey Keitel, that his character despises so much. If you've ever felt alone or marginalized in your life, this movie will immediately strike a deep chord with you. I disagree, however, with interpreters who think that we are supposed to hate and revile Travis and see him as a sick, 'crazed loner' looking for any excuse to satiate his bloodthirsty rage. I would say that, on the contrary, Scorsese's timeless masterpiece is a work of the deepest empathy and compassion. Travis Bickle is every man and woman who has felt abandoned and lost in a dark and seemingly insane world. His self perceived 'moral superiority' is indeed a narcissistic delusion and a defense mechanism, but his feelings of rage and hatred toward a blind and sick society are very real and well founded indeed. I was hard pressed to find much optimism or hope in this movie, and our hero (or anti hero) is as sick and irretrievably lost at the end as he is at the beginning. It is basically a work of alarming pessimism and desperation, similar in many ways to George Orwell's "1984". Any lover or student of film should buy this movie without hesitation.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: After all the flowers are gone in post-sixties America
Review: This is one of those milestone films in America cinema about which millions of words have been written, and everybody who's anybody in filmdom has seen. It received a mixed reception when it appeared twenty-five years ago, and of course the Academy did not reward it.

Taxi Driver remains a difficult movie to evaluate. On the one hand there can be no doubt about the brilliance of Martin Scorsese's direction in which he makes excruciatingly real the street level life of a taxicab driver in the big city. Harsh, multi-hued lighting of predatory street scenes, the cheap, bleak interior of the taxi driver's apartment, the vacuous phrases and promises of the politician, the brutality of guns and knives, the sordidness of things left in the backseat of cabs, and the gritty litter of the streets have the effect of immersing us into the cabby's world. Nor can there be any doubt about the brilliance of Robert De Niro in the title role. He portrays the alienated, misfitted psychotic mentality of Vietnam vet Joshua Bickle poignantly, compellingly, and with a larger than life lividity. Jodie Foster is the very essence of a post-sixties flower child morphed into a twelve and a half year old prostitute. Her childlike ability to find sustenance amid the objective horror of her life compelled our sympathy. Foster's flawless projection of the little girl's pathetic street-wise facade rightfully catapulted her to national attention. Cybill Shepherd was also excellent as a post-Kennedy era political strawberry, and Harvey Keitel was very good as the sleazy pimp, as was Peter Boyle as a cabby philosopher.

On the other hand, the stagy blood splashing toward the end, and the lingering thereon, seemed a little cheap, as though Scorsese did not have complete faith in his production and thought a violence fix was needed to satisfy his audience. Also the fantasy ending in which the unlikely happens like a cartoon joke seemed a contrivance from someone not sure about the import of his movie. The scene in which Cybill Shepherd enters De Niro's empty cab, seemingly to entice him, plays at first like a fantasy, but after he deposits her on the curb, we know it is supposed to be real. Incidentally, the fact that he doesn't notice her until he sees her in his rearview mirror, although he walked up to the cab with her in it, suggests something hurriedly dreamed up during production as a quick commentary on what has gone before.

Nonetheless the ending is transcended because Scorsese had a great movie all along, with outstanding acting and a compelling story artfully shot, leading to a socially-conscience experience vividly reflecting the disillusionment of post sixties America.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Taxi Driver
Review: I am not sure what people see in this movie. Frankly, it was boring and poorly thought out. The ending was absurd. Ironically, I rented it (2001) because a reviewer of "Straw Dogs" recomended it having given very poor marks to "Straw Dogs". Each to his own I suppose; I was riveted by "Staw Dogs".

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Boring
Review: My wife and I found this video to be very boring because there was no plot, poor dialogue, and even the score was monotonous. We viewed it in Sept, 2001, which is 25 years after the movie release. Maybe when it was released it had something to say but it does not hold up to time. Great movies have great dialogue.


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