Taxi Driver

This film surprised me. I wasn't sure if I was going to like it or not because although I was quite impressed by Gangs of New York I didn't have much love for Mean Streets (reviews to come). Most of you have probably already seen this film, so you know that it's a tale of loneliness, of a man slowly losing his marbles, of the psychopath showing through. He's a cab driver, obsessed with cleaning up NYC, in a most inappropriate way. The reason the movie surprised me was its ending, which is designed to worry you and then in the very last frame of the film scare the patooties off you (no, I don't know what patooties are, but I do like that saying). I won't give the ending away, except to say that Martin Scorsese, Robert DeNiro and Paul Schrader (the screenwriter) are a brilliant team who went on to collaborate on other films. If you rent the DVD, watch the excellent documentary. It's over an hour long, and provides insights into making film in the 70s and why Scorsese's work is considered seminal. And try to remember, which I had difficulty doing, that the violent special effects towards the end are bad because they didn't have digital effects to lean on.

year: 1976
length: 113 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075314/combined