Taxi Driver

I wish I could have seen this movie when it came out. NYC was at it's apex (nadir?) of crime, Vietnam vets all over the US where still trying to come to terms with "loosing" a war that the public didn't really support in the first place and porn was still something that you snuck into dirty theatres to watch. Vietnam has been replaced by a war even more openly for matieral gain, NYC is clean and victimized (odd that today is when I post this) and porn is something common place to any American kid with a computer. It's odd, when I was a 13 or 14 a Penhouse was a really big deal. Now you can download any kink you want after 30 seconds of googling the right terms. How the world has improved in 32 years.

This was a beautiful movie (cinimatagraphically, if that's even a word) and the acting in it is first rate, but unfortunately I've seen every copy cat director's version of this story so it didnt have the impact it must have had in the mid 70's. The music is dated and no one with a half a brain is suprised that there are 12 year old hookers, although they probably look closer to 40, not fresh off the farm like Jodie Foster.  This was a good movie but still, I can't wonder what it would have looked like with a fresh mind. I did enjoy the set and stages. It's a lot like the world looked like when I was a young kid and that's kind of cool. This is a movie set in a time where you'd get beat up for wearing a bicycle helmet, doctors smoked in between seeing pacients and no one imagined you could become a millionare for getting hot coffee.

It's an interesting contrast with Cool Hand Luke. In Taxi Driver the protagonist is pretty much a dumb psycho, but ends up with everyone proud of him. Cool Hand Luke is more about a guy who is nice but just does not know when to quit. Similar in that neither fit in, but there is a lot more sympatico in CHL.

Anyhow, it's certainly a solid B but I can't help but wonder what it would have been like to see this fresh, a lot of the visceral effect is gone from both the obvious age of the scenes and the really dated soundtrack.