Singing In The Rain for the manic depressive set

Rating: 6/10 (27 April 2003)

A disturbed and damaged Vietnam vet returns to his native New York and take up a job as a taxi driver; which gives him a perfect viewing platform for the horrors of big city life.
As a portrait of New York inner-city sleaze in the 1970's - the city really was broke and falling down (literally and morally) - it is important and accurate, but sadly descends in to the morbid and then the ludicrous, in that order. Thankfully with have prime-time De Niro in the lead, one few actors that can go crazy without totally alienating the audience.
While many focus on the nonsensical ending as their main quibble, mine is with the main character. If you want to condemn sleaze you have to do so from a position of being above it or beyond it: Our anti-hero seems to be right at home in the gutter with drug dealers, pimps, whores, gun sellers, porn theatres and general riffraff. He as much a consumer as a condemning witness.
Very good acting by all concerned and well regarded, but also a very disposable movie. What are we learning here - that Times Square was (it has been cleaned up since) a sleaze pot? Or that the big city has an ugly underbelly? How stupid and ignorant does Scorsese think we are? I found the whole thing slightly depressing and even dangerous - political assassination as a way of making a love gesture?
(Talk about handing out irresponsible ideas to the general public!)
This is the voice of a man (with writer Schrader) saying "nothing can be done." As we have seen, things can be done and things can be made better. The writer and director are, here, a bit like tabloid journalists, secretly head-over-heels in love with what they are pretending to condemn.