Taxi Driver (18)

Time Out says

Tue May 10 2011

Martin Scorsese’s marvellous and enduring ‘Taxi Driver’ is enjoying a thirty-fifth-anniversary re-release in the same week as its star, Robert De Niro, assumes the role of jury president at Cannes – where the film won the Palme d’Or in 1976.

Right from the opening credits, as we spy a cab emerging from steam and the eyes of Travis Bickle (De Niro) reflected in his rear-view mirror, we know we’re in someone’s personal hell. Bickle, as written by Paul Schrader, is a nasty but also oddly charming time-bomb of alienation and loneliness. One minute, we give him the time of day; the next, we recoil at his violence. Later on, we might think he’s dangerous, especially around women like Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), and yet we watch him in a café with teen prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster) and he seems less vile than the gangsters and pushers of her world. Bickle is complex, intriguing and never one-note. New York is the film’s other antihero, and mostly we see the city through the filter of Bickle’s paranoia. Don’t miss Scorsese’s own cameo as a nervy wreck in the back of his cab.

Author: Dave Calhoun