Scorsese's TAXI DRIVER Gets A One-Week 4K Theatrical Run In Toronto Beginning October 7
Hallucinatory, mesmerizing and strikingly violent, Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader’s plunge into the twisted psyche of a cab-driving Vietnam vet offers a nightmarish voyage into the seedy underbelly of pre-Giuliani NYC. In perhaps his greatest performance, Robert De Niro brilliantly incarnates the lonely and deeply troubled Travis Bickle, a walking shadow adrift in a sea of “filth,” surrounded by random violence, racial tension, porno theatres and prostitution. Desperately striving to be a “normal person,” Bickle becomes obsessed with “saving” a pre-teen prostitute (Jodie Foster) from her manipulative, jive-talking pimp (Harvey Keitel) — an act of redemption which demands a blood sacrifice. Tempering the bleakness and darkness of Schrader’s script — which drew inspiration from John Ford’s The Searchers, Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket and the diaries of would-be George Wallace assassin Arthur Bremer — with a seductively noir-ish visual style and a romantic, luxurious score by the great Bernard Herrmann (completed only days before his death), Scorsese created one of the cinema’s most searing portraits of incipient madness.
Native New Yorker. Lover of all things pizza, chocolate, pets, and good friends. Karaoke hero. Left of center. Survivor. Fond supporter of cult, obscure and independent cinema - especially fond of Asian movies and global action cinema. Author of the bi-weekly Hit List. Founder and editor of Film Combat Syndicate. Still, very much, only human.
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