Taxi Driver Review

As all regular readers of my reviews will know, I like to pride myself on being at height of film, television, video game, and literary snobbishness. Ergo, I hate admitting to lapse in my cultured image. Continuing with this theme, it gives me great displeasure to admit that I hadn't seen Taxi Driver (a film widely regarded as the height Robert De Niro's career, and one of Scorsese's best) until about two weeks ago.

Before you leap on the “oh, how could you” bandwagon I'd like to remind you that I've still read more than you ever will. And I mean ever.

I suppose I should probably provide some form of excuse for this gap in my film knowledge, and lacking any real form of justification for this error in my judgement I must fall back on the law to protect me. I only turned eighteen a little over a month ago. It has only just become legal for me to watch this film. To anyone who points out that I've reviewed certificate eighteen films before now, I have only this to say: I'm a hypocrite, shoot me.

Moving away from my own utter failure as a human being, a critic, and a consumer, Taxi Driver revolves around the life of Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), a depressed young cab driver working in Manhattan. He becomes obsessed with a woman named Betsy (Cybill Shepard) and encounters several criminals on the job. The film depicts his descent into insanity.

It sounds like an extremely simple plot when all of the film techniques, and psycho-analytical character progression are stripped away, which is why the film leaves them in. The camera work on display here is astounding, building and maintaining a level of tension consistently throughout the film's plot. Similarly, the film's script and music all work towards creating a sense of dread. This is so effective that's it's almost suffocating.

Oddly, whilst this is the film's biggest achievement, it is also it's biggest flaw. The atmosphere of dread transcends the level of simple entertainment and becomes something entirely of it's own. The lack of moral clarity in anything shown on screen is simply too much to bear at times. The film itself made me feel sick. It's sadistic to the utmost level.

The acting is superb. De Niro gives the performance of his life as the disturbingly troubled Bickle, managing to make me both fear and sympathise with the character at all times in the film. Besides this the supporting cast are excellent, each managing to craft wholly real characters when given any screen time at all.

Ultimately, Taxi Driver is a landmark in cinéma. Not only is this the perfect example of how to develop and maintain an atmosphere of dread and tension, it also serves as an unending testament to Scorsese's ability as a director and De Niro's skills as an actor. However, it is not a film which is easy to sit through, and as such I feel that can only recommend this to people with a good ability in watching films.

10/10