Review: Taxi Driver

Robert De Niro stars as Vietnam veteran and NY cab driver Travis Bickle, an extremely isolated and psychologically unstable man whose social ineptness leads to further isolation, and an unhinged desire to wipe the ‘scum’ off the streets. An unfortunate attempt at wooing a pretty blond political campaign worker (Cybill Shepherd) then sees him attempt to help a teenage hooker (Jodie Foster) get away from her sadistic pimp (Harvey Keitel). Eventually Travis’ deranged mind fixates on assassinating a political candidate. The streets are awash with filth, and Travis Bickle has a (an unsound) mind to do something about it. Peter Boyle plays Wizard, a veteran cabbie who tries to give Travis some advice, Joe Spinell is Travis’ boss, Albert Brooks is Shepherd’s nerdy co-worker, and Martin Scorsese himself turns up briefly as an enraged husband sitting in the back of Travis’ cab one night.

 

The kind of film I find myself admiring more than liking, but this 1976 American favourite from director Martin Scorsese (“Mean Streets”, “Raging Bull”, “Hugo”, “Shine a Light”) and screenwriter Paul Schrader (“Blue Collar”) is still pretty damn good. If it weren’t for one wrong-headed element, this might’ve actually been close to a classic, but because the film’s ending so offends me, it proves quite a big blow. Up until then, it’s mostly superbly done. Welcome to the most frustrating film ever made!

 

Although I think he has made better films (“The Untouchables”, “Goodfellas”, “The Deer Hunter”, “The Godfather Part II”, maybe “Raging Bull”), this is perhaps the finest performance of Robert De Niro’s career, whilst Jodie Foster is impossibly good, and both Peter Boyle and a cheesy-yet-sleazy Harvey Keitel steal their every scene. The opening sounds and images are unforgettable, as is Travis Bickle’s frightening opening narration. This is a film about an unpleasant world, but make no mistake, Travis Bickle is already a damaged man by the time we meet him. He just get a lot more unhinged as the film progresses. The brilliance in De Niro’s iconic performance is that he makes Travis believable. He’s normal enough that he can blend in for the most part, but ‘off’ enough that he doesn’t actually fit in. He fails to truly connect with anyone, and that combined with his mental instability and the scummy world around him create an urban nightmare about to explode in violence.

 

To be honest, I think the cinematography by Michael Chapman (“Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, “Raging Bull”, “Personal Best”) is a lot more impressive than the music score by the great Bernard Herrmann (“Citizen Kane”, “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, “Psycho”, “Cape Fear”), which is overrated and a bit strident. I’m not entirely sure it fits the film, to be honest. The lighting in particular is superlative here, and just look at the yellow taxis through the window in the scene at the coffee shop with De Niro and Cybill Shepherd. Coincidence? Perhaps, but I doubt it. It’s just very clever filmmaking. The cinematography is so evocative here that you can almost smell the scum on the sidewalk.

 

Some might view the film as racist, considering the portrayal of African-Americans here as seedy criminals, however one must remember whose POV we are seeing all of this from. Is Travis really a reliable narrator? So I don’t think the film is racist, but Travis probably is (Apparently the original screenplay had Sport and several other characters as African-Americans, which might have made it a little harder to defend, so I’m glad changes were made). Although hardly a fun movie, it’s a well-observed, disturbing and to an extent interesting character study. The filmmakers and De Niro really get into this guy’s skin. He may be able to blend in, but Travis is a sick man who is completely socially clueless in a lot of ways. He takes a date to the porno theatre, because he’s already unbalanced and those are the movies he goes to. Headaches, obsession, social ineptitude, Vietnam war scars on his psyche, a desire to remove the city’s scum, etc. Spot-on. There’s a particularly heartbreaking scene between Travis and fellow cabbie Wizard (Peter Boyle), where Travis is clearly trying to reach out and get help for the issues inside his head, but a) He’s not socially articulate enough to express it, and b) Boyle’s brand of sage wisdom isn’t on the level of the kind of help Travis needs. Travis’ issues are above this guy’s pay grade.

 

There’s some really memorable work by the supporting cast here, including a nerdy Albert Brooks, arsehole-ish Joe Spinell, and probably the best work of Cybill Shepherd’s useless career. Although she’s not in the film very much, Jodie Foster is nonetheless startlingly good in a role probably only she could’ve played at the time the film was made. For me, aside from her, De Niro (obviously), and an excellent Peter Boyle, the most impressive and memorable performances are by Harvey Keitel and Scorsese himself. As the long-haired pimp Matthew, AKA Sport, Keitel looks completely ridiculous and sounds like a tool, but he is undeniably memorably sleazy and disgusting. The film itself is a bit heightened, so Keitel isn’t terribly difficult to swallow. Scorsese’s own cameo, meanwhile is so incredibly frightening one wonders why he doesn’t act more often. He’s terrific here.

 

It’s so well-observed for the most part, that when the ending comes along, it made me extremely mad that Scorsese and Schrader have ultimately fouled it up a bit. Sure, it still wouldn’t really be my kind of story even if the ending were different, but the ending as it stands now just doesn’t belong to the story they were previously telling. In fact, once Foster’s character re-emerges, it feels as if the film has taken a sharp turn into vigilante fantasy. People will vehemently disagree with me. I know I’ll get accused of completely misunderstanding the director’s intentions, but if so, the director should’ve made his intentions clearer. I don’t need to be spoon-fed, nor am I stupid, so if your intentions aren’t clear, that falls on the filmmaker. As is, it plays out like Scorsese is painting Travis Bickle out as some kind of hero, albeit in a possibly black comedy/ironic fashion. This goes against what the rest of the film has been, which is coming to understand who and what Bickle is so that we look out for his kind in the future, should anything like this come to fruition. I don’t believe in blaming movies for the violent actions of someone who is already disturbed, but given the ending here and what happened with John Hinkley and the Jodie Foster connection, I don’t think Scorsese has helped the argument one bit. It’s potentially dangerous, and he has put a big black mark at the end of a film that is otherwise unquestionably well-done. ****** SPOILER WARNING ***** If the film had ended at the shootout with Travis presumably dead, you have a much stronger film. Hell, you could even let him live without turning him into a ‘role model’ and still leave it as a warning for us to look out for a Travis-type in the future. The way it plays out, it doesn’t even work on its own internal logic because no one would think of Travis as a hero given the way things play out. He’s a creepy guy with a Mohawk. C’mon, people! It was the 70s, you could arouse suspicions with fuddy-duddies simply by having long, unkempt hair for cryin’ out loud, but a bloodied guy in a Mohawk who has just killed a bunch of people is immediately pegged for an upright avenger who acted in self-defence? I’m not sure how many people would necessarily have been witness to the final shootout, but I don’t buy the idea that the cops would spin it as Travis acting in self-defence, simply because his victims were lowlife scum that deserved it. That’s giving Scorsese and Schrader too much credit. I guess you could argue that the final stages are actually all in Travis’ deluded mind, I like that idea a lot, actually except that Scorsese and Schrader don’t emphasise it quite enough to buy it. One should note the different haircut Travis has at the end, so it’s certainly plausible, but I can’t 100% side with that reading. Scorsese says the sound we hear at the very end suggests that Travis is no hero and will go out on the prowl again. I buy the last part of that (it kind of points to what the rest of the film is saying), but I think he goes too far overboard in having Iris’ family praise Travis (not to mention the final bit with Shepherd) for it to be a condemnation of him ultimately. And since the rest of the film is pretty grim stuff, I can’t quite buy the idea that it was intended in a darkly comedic way, either. So no matter how you read the ending, or want to read it, I don’t think it’s even conveyed well enough to work. I really do think Scorsese and Schrader in some way approve of Travis here, and I cannot go with that moral, any more than I would praise the actions of Paul Kersey in the “Death Wish” films. ***** END SPOILER *****

 

This is a really, really well-made and unforgettable film. It’s worthy of artistic praise in many ways. However, the ending, whether you think it sends the wrong message, or is simply not conveyed with enough clarity, simply doesn’t work and drags the film down quite a bit. That’s a shame, because what’s great about this film is masterful. De Niro is so amazing here that it scares me to think of the research he might’ve done for the role. If you loved A Catcher in the Rye, this might just be your ideal film (Personally I think it’s better than that horrible book I was subjected to in high school).

 

Rating: B