سائق التاكسي

De Niro plays You-talkinna-me Travis Bickle, a loner and a socially inept New York City cabby who takes the job because 'he cannot sleep at night'. As Travis sees more and more of the filth and depredation on the streets he tours, he turns to violence in an attempt to better the world. The movie is insufferably slow and repetitive while it channels the impressions Travis gets moonlighting the streets of New York. The dialog throughout the film feels unnatural and hammy and sucks the life out of an otherwise potentially interesting watch. There's also not much of a plot here which makes the 2 hour viewing quite a challenge. Foster does well but simply isn't believable as a child prostitute working for a pimp played by Keitel. Keitel himself also fails to convince due to the lackluster and rather phony script. Shepherd makes a short and forgettable appearance as Travis his love interest and seems to be cast only for her pretty eyes and patented stare. Though wonderfully moody and well filmed, Taxi Driver is at its core an uninteresting character piece that goes on too long and tells us too little. The music score consists of variations on two jazzy reprises by Bernard Herrmann that are set on repeat throughout the film. When after an hour you hear it being played for the gazillionth time, it starts to become more than a little silly.

Taxi Driver, the classic that made Robert DeNiro Robert DeNiro. It's amazing to see how far this man has come in cinema, some of my friends ask me questions about films and advice, one of my friends had asked if they wanted to see where Bobby got the big notice I usually recommend Taxi Driver, granted he was in The Godfather Part 2 and was incredible, but Taxi Driver made him stand out as a strong lead actor. Taxi Driver is just all together a great film that is absolutely perfection. Martin Scorcesse who also was just really starting out made this movie that brought us back to the film noir genre. He made this great classic and I don't even think he realized how much it would stand against the test of time, to this day we still know this film and even if you don't know it, you know the infamous speech "You talking' to me?". This is a film about isolation, loneliness, and self destruction at it's worst. Travis Bickle who claims to be an honorably discharged Marine it is implied that he is a Vietnam veteran is a lonely and depressed young man of 26. He settles in Manhattan, where he becomes a night time taxi driver due to chronic insomnia. Bickle spends his restless days in seedy * theaters and works 12 or 14 hour shifts during the evening and night time hours carrying passengers among all five boroughs of New York City. Bickle becomes interested in Betsy, a campaign volunteer for New York Senator Charles Palantine. She is initially intrigued by Bickle and agrees to a date with him after he flirts with her over coffee and sympathizes with her own apparent loneliness. On their date, however, Bickle is clueless about how to treat a woman and thinks it would be a good idea to take her to a sex film. Offended, she leaves him and takes a taxi home alone. The next day he tries to reconcile with Betsy, phoning her and sending her flowers, but all of his attempts are in vain. Rejected and depressed, Bickle's thoughts begin to turn violent. Disgusted by the petty street crime that he witnesses while driving through the city, he now finds a focus for his frustration and begins a program of intense physical training. He buys a number of pistols from an illegal dealer and practices a menacing speech in the mirror, while pulling out a pistol that he attached to a home-made sliding action holster on his right arm "You talking' to me?". Bickle is revolted by what he considers the moral decay around him. One night while on shift, Iris, a 12-year-old child prostitute, gets in his cab, attempting to escape her pimp. Shocked by the occurrence, Bickle fails to drive off and the pimp, Sport, reaches the cab. Later seeing Iris on the street he pays for her time, although he does not have sex with her and instead tries to convince her to leave this way of life behind. But after her rejection as well, Travis decides to take things into his own hands, "Pow!". This is one of the most memorable movies of all time and has really stood it's ground. It's personally one of my favorites and made me fall in love with Robert DeNiro all over again. The script to Taxi Driver is just so incredibly powerful and the performances were just perfect. Jodie Foster, this little girl at the time was such a presence on screen, she pulls in what was a very tricky performance and was hauntingly beautiful. Cybill Sheppard was also very beautiful and I was absolutely in love with her character and felt so bad for her. Everything about Taxi Driver is just great, I don't know how much I could go on about the love I have for this film. It's a film that you will never forget and trust me, if you haven't seen it, go out and rent it immediately, you won't regret it. It's bloody, it's twisted, it's crazy, but it's one of the best films of all time. 10/10

I don't get it. I really don't. (And, I guess I never will) Why does this dreary, dead-end movie from the dreary, dead-end 1970s seem to rate so high with so many people? I can't, for the life of me, see how these people would give this certified dud 8 & 10-star ratings. I mean, Taxi Driver's story was less than interesting. There wasn't a single likable character in the whole lot of these NYC losers. The directing was, for the most part, very amateurish and inconsistent. And the violence was, at times, almost laughable. This, to me, was not in any way a satisfying movie-experience, yet people seem to, literally, fall all over themselves, heaping unwarranted praise on it. Personally, I think that most of these people who love Taxi Driver to pieces are probably now in their 50s and 60s. These people saw this film when it was first released in movie theaters back in 1976. And due to a sense of blind-nostalgia they continue to perceive this movie through rose-colored glasses. And, with that, there's absolutely nothing anyone can say that can shake that almost-senile sentimentality out of their little heads.