PURE GENIUS

Rating: Null/10 (2 July 2000)

Taxi Driver is one of my fave films and remains one of the best flicks ever made. Marty's direction is flawless, Robert's acting is outstanding, Paul's screenplay is magnificent. The pain of rejection from society, from New Yorkers, from women, from everyone and everything it seems fills the character of Travis Bickle. I know all to well what its like to be driving by couple in your car like Travis does and seeing every guy you pass with a beautiful girlfriend on his arm. When it seems everyone else seems so together and you seem out of place. A thumb in a world full of fingers. Travis is God's lonely man and we feel for him. I remember lines like when Travis muses aloud about the Cybill Shepherd character: "I realize now how much she is just like the rest of them. Cold and distant. Many people are like that, women for sure. They're like a union."

When you see where Travis took the Shepherd character for their first date, however, you kind of have to laugh at why he can't realize altogether why she rejected him. I've known some women you could take to an X theater on the first date, don't get me wrong, but Cybill's character in this flick is not up for that. Not on the first date anyway.

But humor aside, this film retains all of its raw, emotional impact it had when it was first released. I saw the 20th anniversary re-release into theaters back in 1996. I remember I was 26 yrs old at the time. The same age as Travis is in this film. Weird. That added an extra connection to the film for me. Plus the way Travis' crummy apartment was strewn with Doritos bags and Big Mac containers and the way Travis walks into a store to buy some milk and a six pack of donuts before shooting an armed robber is something I have done many a time in my life as a bachelor. Getting the donuts, not the shooting thing. But anyway, see this film. See it soon, see it now. It lives, it breathes, it is cinema at its finest. Rock on Travis, baby. I got the sense at the end of the film his near death experience ahd strangely purified him. I felt a similar way after seeing this picture. Over and out...