Irish Film Institute -TAXI DRIVER

TAXI DRIVER

Director: MARTIN SCORSESE

DIRECTOR - MARTIN SCORSESE • U.S.A. • 1976 • COLOUR • DOLBY DIGITAL STEREO • 114 MIN


FROM THE VERY START, WITH BERNARD HERRMANN’S CRASHING CHORDS ACCOMPANYING THE SHOT OF A YELLOW CAB EMERGING FROM A SULPHUROUS STEAM CLOUD IN A NEON-DRENCHED NIGHT-TIME NEW YORK, MARTIN SCORSESE’S MODERN CLASSIC GRIPS LIKE A VICE.
Taxi Driver centres on Travis Bickle (a devastating performance by Robert De Niro), an insomniac Vietnam veteran working nights despite his growing disgust at the ‘garbage and trash’ he sees walking the city sidewalks. Nursing various resentments, Bickle suddenly finds himself obsessively drawn to Betsy, a campaign worker for a presidential candidate; after a first date goes badly, his attention turns to Iris, a fourteen-year-old prostitute he makes it his mission to save. Eloquently capturing Bickle’s sense of the tawdry, menacing New York of the mid-70s as a hell-on-earth, Scorsese’s film remains one of the defining movies of that decade. It cries out to be seen on the big screen. —Geoff Andrew.

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