City of Night

Rating: 10/10 (18 November 2019)

One of the most lauded and influential films in cinema history, "Taxi Driver" is one of the highlights of the gritty realism that characterized American film during its peak in the 1970s. A near flawless panoramic view of one man's world and state of mind. Travis Bickle is an ex-marine who drives a cab in New York City. Soaking in the streets of the big city the sights and sounds of the great metropolis with its attendant hub of activity: noise, dirt, rude and bizarre individuals, violence, crime, he's equally dismayed and repulsed at the world around him. Disappointed in his personal life the harsh existence slowly gnaws in him as the ugliness of society gets into his head culminating in a series of events that lead to an end that's equal comedy, pathos and liberation. Robert De Niro perfectly embodies the lead character with his unhinged, wasted, weary, awkward, autistic-behaving simpleton personality who gradually takes the viewer into his steady descent into madness. The Big Apple is the perfect background to the dark and grimy flick mirroring its own decay and collapse at the time. Justly regarded as one of the most distinguished and important films ever made this is a prime example of art doing justice to life and one work of art that only gets better with time.