An insufferable bore

Rating: 1/10 (7 September 2013)

De Niro plays You-talkinna-me Travis Bickle, a loner and a socially inept New York City cabby who takes the job because 'he cannot sleep at night'. As Travis sees more and more of the filth and depredation on the streets he tours, he turns to violence in an attempt to better the world.
The movie is insufferably slow and repetitive while it channels the impressions Travis gets moonlighting the streets of New York. The dialog throughout the film feels unnatural and hammy and sucks the life out of an otherwise potentially interesting watch. There's also not much of a plot here which makes the 2 hour viewing quite a challenge. Foster does well but simply isn't believable as a child prostitute working for a pimp played by Keitel. Keitel himself also fails to convince due to the lackluster and rather phony script. Shepherd makes a short and forgettable appearance as Travis his love interest and seems to be cast only for her pretty eyes and patented stare.
Though wonderfully moody and well filmed, Taxi Driver is at its core an uninteresting character piece that goes on too long and tells us too little. The music score consists of variations on two jazzy reprises by Bernard Herrmann that are set on repeat throughout the film. When after an hour you hear it being played for the gazillionth time, it starts to become more than a little silly.