Taxi Driver

Director:  Martin Scorsese
Year Released:  1976
Rating:  3.5

It's taken four separate viewings several years apart to have finally made peace with this still controversial Scorsese picture, as I felt - during earlier viewings - that it never rose above the muck it was so fascinated with. I've always "liked" it, but never "loved" it, which I believe I was trying to do - I'm not sure it's a kind of picture that wants to be or can be loved in the way so many "classics" can: it's too repellent, too deranged and too depressing, as haunting a portrait of living hell I've seen on film (this, of course, does not invalidate it as an important work of art). Robert De Niro's transformation into Travis Bickle is indeed as impressive as his turn as Jake La Motta, although Cybill Shepherd and Jodie Foster - as his Madonna and his Whore, respectively - don't do so bad for themselves.

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