Taxi Driver

What an overrated movie. Taxi Driver, for all the praise and plaudits given to it, is at its root a disturbing and repetitive joke, and unfortunately one starring De Niro and directed by Scorcese.

Travis Bickle (De Niro) is a loner, a taxi driver whose anger at the state of the city he lives in begins to drive him toward action. Encountering political worker Betsy (Shepherd) and child prostitute Iris (Foster), two very different types of woman, Bickle’s lack of social skill, coupled with his determination to change things, drives him toward a dangerous destination.

De Niro is engaging as nutcase Travis Bickle, but he lacks the intensity that the actor has shown in more recent times. Revered for this role by critics over the last thirty years, is good at playing psychopaths. Just watch Cape Fear; he’s better in that in than here. Travis Bickle is an immature, pathetic man who thinks he can change New York single handedly, and to that end De Niro does present the near-harmless level of oddness in the man. However, I couldn’t help but imagine a newer actor (say Ed Norton) in the role throughout, because they’d be better; the man is blank – and it’s hard to see how De Niro made a career from this.

Jodie Foster can hardly be called a star of the film, but she and Cybill Shepherd share about the same amount of time on-screen as the focus of Bickle’s crusades. Foster, at twelve, plays a child prostitute, and it is a pretty amazing performance (for what little performance it is) by the young actress. Shepherd plays a campaign worker for the presidential candidate featured in the film, and she at least presents the character as more than one-dimensional, a woman who makes the wrong assumptions about the wrong man.

Peter Boyle, Martin Scorcese, Leonard Harris and Harvey Keitel play small roles in the movie as counters to Bickle, with Boyle his co-worker at the taxi company – giving him advice on his life, and as such, not a particularly strong performance. Harris plays the slightly slimy politician Palantine, whom Bickle supports simply through his obsession with Shepherd’s Betsy working for him. Keitel is bizarre as Foster’s pimp – it’s strange to even comprehend that it is Keitel, as the role is so small and the performance so poor that the actor seems miscast. Scorcese himself seems to make the biggest impact in his cameo as a deranged customer of Bickle’s – his little diatribe about his wife and what he plans to do is probably one of the better scenes in the movie.

The film is gritty – the very definition of the word in fact. Scorcese does direct the film well – the insight into this one man’s insanity is well-synchronised with the degraded Manhattan presented on-screen. It’s just not that fantastic – not as good as the hype would suggest it is. In fact, some of the scenes are quite weak to behold, in particular those featuring Shepherd and her co-worker – almost unnecessary and quite out of place. The infamous line is somewhat lessened in impact thanks to its many impersonators through the years, and in looking at the rest of the dialogue, only Bickle’s descent into anarchy is intelligent in its construction. His uncertainty in voice-over reflects well on the film, with the constant stumble for articulation and justification. The scenes featuring Shepherd and her co-worker mentioned above are stupid however – it seems like Scorcese was trying too hard to get an indie-style conversation in the movie, and as such it feels staged and ridiculous in context – Bickle’s simple humanity clashes wildly with their inane, bohemian-style chat.

Hearing the theme score by Bernard Herrmann at the onset, it is incredibly good – a piece that seems to match Bickle’s bizzare personality with the metropolitan sprawl of Manhattan. However, it’s about ten minutes in when you realise Scorcese is going to use it over and over again – and by the conclusion you just won’t ever, EVER want to hear it again: a prime example of good intentions gone wildly wrong. The city of Manhattan, shot by Scorcese, looks amazing here. The blurred lights, contrasted with the multitudes of people, give the night scenes that sense of urban life that many films miss – and some scenes present the darker side of the city at night convincingly well. The violence at the conclusion is also vividly brutal – shocking considering the plodding, harmless tone of much of the rest of the film.

It’s good to be able to say that I saw this movie – but that’s all I got out of it, other than a sense of disappointment and annoyance. Both actor and director have gone on to better things, so I should be thankful for its existence, but the truth is that the movie is seriously overhyped.

3/10