At 26, Vietnam veteran Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is slipping slowly into isolation and violence on the streets of New York City. Trying to solve his insomnia by driving a yellow cab on the night shift, he grows increasingly disgusted by the people who hang out at night: “Someday a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets.” His touching attempts to woo Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a Senator’s campaign worker, turn sour when he takes her to a porn movie on their first date. He even fails in his attempt to persuade child prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster) to desert her pimp Sport (Harvey Keitel) and return to her parents and school. Driven to the edge by powerlessness, he buys four handguns and sets out to assassinate the Senator, heading for the infamy of a `lone crazed gunman’.
DVD BONUS FEATURES INCLUDE:
“Martin Scorsese on Taxi Driver” Featurette
“Producing Taxi Driver” Featurette
“Influence and Appreciation” Documentary
Robert De Niro, Oliver Stone, Roger Corman and others pay tribute to Scorsese and the film
“God’s Lonely Man” Documentary
“Travis’ New York Locations” Featurette
Storyboard to Film Comparisons with Martin Scorsese Introduction
New Feature-length Commentary by Writer Paul Schrader
New Feature-length Commentary by Professor Robert Kolker
“Taxi Driver Stories” Featurette
“Making Taxi Driver” Documentary
Animated Photo Galleries
“Including Scorsese at Work” Photo Montage
Original Screenplay Read Along
Taxi Driver is the definitive cinematic portrait of loneliness and alienation manifested as violence. It is as if director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader had tapped into precisely the same source of psychological inspiration (“I just knew I had to make this film,” Scorsese would later say), combined with a perfectly timed post-Watergate expression of personal, political, and societal anxiety. Robert De Niro, as the tortured, ex-Marine cab driver Travis Bickle, made movie history with his chilling performance as one of the most memorably intense and vividly realized characters ever committed to film. Bickle is a self-appointed vigilante who views his urban beat as an intolerable cesspool of blighted humanity. He plays guardian angel for a young prostitute (Jodie Foster), but not without violently devastating consequences. This masterpiece, which is not for all tastes, is sure to horrify some viewers, but few could deny the film’s lasting power and importance. –Jeff Shannon
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March 5, 2010
#1
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ok i want to start off by saying that im only writing this to hopefully save a good 2-3 hours of a few peoples lives. i had heard good things about this movie for a long time and i finally rented it. man was i dissapointed. the movie starts out VERY slow with deniro driving around in his taxi watching people. This goes on for like an hour and a half (seems longer). after talking to 20 people in pointless conversations he finally buys some pistols. i was thinking ok this is going to get more entertaining very soon. he then proceeds to practice shooting for a half hour in his apartment but whenever he goes out he never brings the guns. so after awhile of watching him talk to more prostitutes and other people he finally decides to go shoot a guy running for president. i was thinking ok this better be the biggest fire fight ever to make up for the past couple hours for boredom. right when he tries to pull a gun a secret service guy spots him and he runs away…. i then wanted to turn off the movie…but i didnt. so then hes goes home and practices somemore then decides hes gonna save a little girl. so he goes and shoots a couple guys but you really cant see much because its really dark. the girl is then “free” even though she could have left anytime and deniro looks like hes going to die on the bed. i was thinking ok that was an okay ending to a VERY long, boring, and overall bad movie. but of course it didnt end. he doesnt go to jail for some reason so i thought maybe he has a chance to kill the guy running for president and there will be some huge scarface like ending. nope. hes drives around and adjusts his mirror and hes a hero because he saved a prostitute.
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March 5, 2010
#2
My wife and I found this video to be very boring because there was no plot, poor dialogue, and even the score was monotonous. We viewed it in Sept, 2001, which is 25 years after the movie release. Maybe when it was released it had something to say but it does not hold up to time. Great movies have great dialogue.
March 5, 2010
#3
This film is manipulative and exploitative. It DOES NOT really give you a portrait of what alienation, paranoia and dislocation are really like. It glamourises these things in the worst possible way ie very, very slickly and with a lot of craft and attention to detail. This film belongs in the same dustbin as similarly AMORAL and empty films like Seven, Goodfellas et al that purport to be ‘truthful’ investigations of the dark and disturbing – they are part of the problem, not the solution !
March 5, 2010
#4
Hey, angry young man! If you’re going to just sit there all smug, Mr. “Yeah, I used to have a TV, but I busted it cuz I just don’t care, doggie,” and make fun of this nation’s fine Secret Service, why don’t you just go to an axis of evil nation and see how funny it is then? When you’re sucking on rocks to stave off the inevitable side effects of dehydration. When, if you want to go to the market to buy more rocks to suck on, you have to whip yourself with metal shards tied to the end of long leather straps as you walk. And just because you saved the sorry excuse for a young lady who will become a drug addict bag lady once she gets old enough to lose hope of realizing her dreams earns you no points in my book. Freedom doesn’t come for free, so quit whining about the draft, Dick Trickle! The “Moonlighting” tie-in is cute, but quickly turns sour, as Bruce Willis seems to have been off working on another “Die Hard” installment while the episode was being filmed and it’s just not the same without those sarcastic wing-dingers. Bet you didn’t know Lou Ferrigno was Scorsese’s first choice for the lead, but he wasn’t willing to thin down for the role and he kept firing his language coaches.
March 5, 2010
#5
A film classic (apparently) about a Vietnam veteran who becomes a taxi driver and then lets himself be broken down by the misery and the meaninglessness of modern society.
Seen with Year 2000 eyes, »Taxi Driver« does not have a great deal of appeal. It has purely historical value.
The best things you can say about this film is the very beautiful photographing and cameraing, plus that it is interesting to watch very young Robert DeNiro’s and even younger Jodie Foster’s already then great talents. You also get glimpses of Harvey Keitel and Jeff Goldblum.
Do watch »Taxi Driver«, ’cause it is one of those classics that you have to have seen. But don’t expect too much.