Goodness me, how movies can change over time

Rating: 7/10 (26 July 2017)

Goodness me, how some movies can change over time, in perception, if not in fact.
I'm old enough to remember seeing "Taxi Driver" in the cinema all the way back in 1976 and I've probably seen it two or three times since then, including this evening. It's still a good movie but, in my view, no longer the great and ground- breaking movie that it was back then.
What I liked. Well, I liked De Niro in his first serious appearance in a well funded movie. And Jodie Foster was sensationally good in her first box office movie at the age of 13. The script was well written and the movie impressively directed by Scorsese although special effects were pretty much in their infancy back in '76.
What I didn't like (now anyway). Well, I came to detest that sax "melody" which was repeated ad nauseum all the way through the movie. It got to be like finger- nails on a blackboard to me by half way through. Why in God's name couldn't Scorsese see that all that repetition of something so tuneless would really get on people's nerves after the 8th or the 10th time? Cybil Shepherd was fine but how about Albert Brookes with that stupid 70s hair and, let's be honest here, he was never really an actor was he?
Something else too. I just can't work out how someone/anyone can pre- meditatedly murder three people and walk free from Gaol to continue his life as a cab driver. Was it OK in 1970s New York for a citizen to go about cleaning up the bad guys and the pimps and then be sent on his way because he was doing something noble and necessary. I kind of doubt it, even then.
Taxi Driver is still a fine movie to watch now but, in my view, it no longer rates the 8.3 that I see on IMDb; 7.2 from me. There are other movies from around the same time that have "aged" rather better than this one. See Taxi Driver by all means; it's still a good and well made movie. But, trust me, anyone under 30 is likely to be bored to death and maybe p****d off, as I was, by that infuriating sax.
JMV