Taxi Driver Review

 

        It’s about time I get to review a Martin Scorsese film. Taxi Driver is the first Scorsese film that I bought and led to my ever-expanding collection of movies. How I heard of this film was out of all things a Seth Rogen comedy. His film Neighbors had a bit where the frat next door to Rogen’s family had a De Niro party. I think Zac Efron was in a Taxi Driver costume. Anyways, Taxi Driver represents why I love 70s cinema. 

1. Travis Bickle

        De Niro steals the show when he plays the loner Travis. We see him walk into the taxi place in search of a job. Everything that we need to know about him is in this scene. Additionally, just what he wears which is a U.S. Marine jacket when he and the interviewer make that connection that they fought in Vietnam. It's just crazy to seeing DeNiro young in this film. My first exposure was in one of the Meet the Family movies. 

        What I like about him is that he has a level of depth to him where we don’t know how to feel about him. He has monologues that we hear throughout the film that is from his diaries. We can interpret that as him being morphed from the conflict in southeast Asia. Which is why he’s a blip in New York City. He doesn't think what's normal to us. One of thing he does is going to a porn theater, which was a thing at that time. It's because he thinks it's normal and tries to take a woman to accompany him which i'll mention next. 

        To even expand on just how mentally not well he really is, he tries to date. For one thing it’s charming when he talks to Betsy. Since she is working for a politician’s campaign. Travis walks in faking wanting to help just to have a moment with her. It goes predictably south and to really drive the point even further. As he tries to apologize to her, the camera that is on him moves to the hallway. 

        The overall thing that is being communicated is this idea of alienation. Again, Travis is not well and he tries to stay sane when he drives. The little things make him go progressively to the deep end is attributed to what he sees when he’s driving. More so when Bickle picks up a customer who tells him he wants to kill his cheating girlfriend. It shows that Travis is becoming part of the rut of New York. 

        One last thing is that I want to bring up the music. I love it for the most part and it was composer Bernard Hermann’s last soundtrack he conducted before his passing. I like it because it’s somber and it doesn’t have moments where it’s too overtly depressing. It’s one of those soundtracks you can listen when it’s raining. 

2. New York

Those shots of New York from the 70s is really something to see. Looking at the film is like seeing a time capsule come to life. It serves the point that the environment is what Travis wants to get rid of since he sees it as a threat. Albeit he becomes part of the problem when he becomes intwined with the seedy parts. 

        I feel like people don’t know that New York City at that time was the opposite of what we think of the city now. It was notorious for being corrupt with the cops being sketchy. In fact, it was the basis for the Al Pacino film Serpico. Additionally, the city was just about unsafe for anyone since the subways were prone to mechanical failures. 

        Time Square wasn’t even a cool place when we hear the location. It was littered with drug users and prostitutes in every corner of the site. Just to put it in summation if you skipped what I just typed down, New York City was bad.   

3. Legacy

        The film was received greatly and it helped Robert DeNiro’s stardom reach further. I feel that since he has become an example of being a method actor, meaning an actor becoming the character in the movie and trying to live the lifestyle of the person in the movie. DeNiro and Scorsese had worked prior in Mean Streets, and they continued more in their collaboration such as King of Comedy, Cape Fear, and Goodfellas to name a few. 

        Whenever I bring up this movie, Joker from 2019 is usually associated with it. Just to make my opinion of that movie brief, it was ok. My main gripe was that it tried to be Taxi Driver, but the main character in the other film is too closely associated with the Batman villain. Meaning that any sense of unfamiliarity with him is nonexistent since we know just who the Joker is with prior media exposure. Maybe next year I’ll talk about Joker, but I feel that Taxi Driver is a better movie in comparison. 

4. Overall 

        Whenever you come across a review that has little to say about a classic, you know it’s well. I will say that the film may come across as depressing to some. Taxi Driver is one of Martin Scorsese’s best films in an ever expanding and illustrious filmography.