My Thoughts On Taxi Driver

I don't know if it was the bright sunshine yesterday or the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed my large vanilla Diet Coke from the candy store, but last night I felt happy enough to take on another potentially disturbing movie off of my Must See list.

Last night's choice: Taxi Driver.

Generally speaking, I don't give you a summary of the movie because (according to certain members of my family) everyone in the free world has seen these movies, except for me. But I'm going to make an exception and give you a brief recap of Taxi Driver. Why? Because I was under the impression that it was a heartwarming story about funny things that happen in the back of New York City cabs driven by Robert DeNiro.

Spoiler alert: that impression, my friends, was false. This is not a heartwarming tale about funny things that happen in cabs. Apparently I was confusing Taxi Driver with the TV show Taxi. I'm sure that's a mistake a lot of people make, right? Interchanging Robert DeNiro and Tony Danza? Yeah, I thought so, too.

In Taxi Driver, Robert DeNiro plays a nighttime cabbie who believes that New York is a cesspool of sleaze and filth. He decides to make the city a better place. His focus becomes saving one twelve year old prostitute (Jodie Foster) from her pimp.

Sounds lovely and uplifting, doesn't it?

The first few scenes were enough for me to realize that this wasn't a light hearted comedy, so I paused the movie and looked up the description. This is what I read:

A disturbed New York cabby befriends a teenage hooker and frees her from her pimp.

I promptly freaked out because the word disturbed appeared in the description and you all know how I feel about disturbing movies. However, I didn't find Taxi Driver as disturbing as I feared it would be. Perhaps 'Silence of the Lambs' (the Queen Mother of all disturbing movies thus far) has dulled my sense of what disturbing cinema is. Maybe I find a 1976 Jodie Foster less disturbing than a 1991 Jodie Foster. Or (most likely) I was distracted by those fabulous 70s fashions.

My word, people really knew how to dress in the 70s, didn't they? You just don't see men sporting plaid suits and butterfly collars anymore. It's a shame, really. Those suits were fierce.

Side note: know who else was in this movie? Besides Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster, and Cybil Shepard? Peter Boyle. The dad from 'Everybody Loves Raymond'. He's funnier on Raymond, but excellent in Taxi Driver. He's bald with a ring of fringe hair around his head in both Raymond and Taxi Driver. This leads me to wonder if this guy's ever had hair.

To recap: Surprisingly, I liked Taxi Driver. It wasn't as disturbing to me as, ahem, other movies on my list. The cast was good, the dialogue was excellent (You talkin' to me? Well I'm the only one here), and homeboy displayed some mad gun drawing skills. Taxi Driver: it's disturbing, but not too disturbing, like on a molecular level or anything. It'll never replace 'Ferris Bueller' or 'The Shawshank Redemption' on my list of favorite movies, but it didn't make me want to throw a Snuggie over my head.

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