Hit-and-miss (Taxi Driver (DVD))

Member Name: CTVicky

Product:	Taxi Driver (DVD)
Date:	03/12/09 (26 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some great acting and cinematography

Disadvantages: Don't really understand it

Robert De Niro stars as a twenty-six year old war veteran living alone in a big city. He decides to apply to work as a taxi driver on nights, and thanks to his CV he gets the job.

Very quickly he realises that there is a different side to the city at night than in the day, and he is overwhelmed by the depravity he sees in the ghettos he drives through.

He becomes infatuated with a campaign worker called Betsy, played by Cybil Shepherd, and wants to date her but doesn't know how to go about it.

He eventually meets a child prostitute called Iris, played by Jodie Foster. He is horrified by her lifestyle and decides he wants to clean up the streets and rescue her from her "hell".

This film was made in 1976, directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader.

I have mixed feelings about this film. On the one hand, there are some fantastic performances, on the other, I don't really like the story.

I thought the best actor in this film, without a doubt, was Jodie Foster. I found her totally convincing. I was just blown away by her. Robert De Niro was almost as good as her.

I really like the cinematography in this film. There's a brilliant shot towards the end, but I don't want to give the end away!

The storyline however just doesn't do it for me. It's supposed to be a film about loneliness and insanity, but that doesn't really come across. There were a lot of scenes that left me scratching my head, they just didn't make any sense.

Taxi Driver of course, has the famous "are you talking to me?" scene, so it might be worth watching it for that. It also stars Harvey Keitel and Albert Brooks, the voice of Marlin in Finding Nemo.

It's quite a good DVD though, it comes with the script, so you can act out scenes from it, and there's also a documentary of the making of the Taxi Driver, with interviews with all the stars.

Summary: I just don't get it.