Taxi Driver (Matt)

I went into this movie with high expectations. I mean, it's "Taxi Driver", most everyone has at least heard of this movie. Just look at the film credits: Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, and look at the oscar nominations: best picture, best actor, best actress in a supporting role, music. Woah, this movie was bound to be a home run. How could it possibly go wrong?

I didn't like it. The acting was great but the story just wasn't enough to keep me interested. It seemed to just be a movie about a guy with issues who winds up taking them too far. I think I was too detached from De Niro's character to build up much of an emotional response to what I was seeing on screen. I don't mean that De Niro's acting wasn't great, because it was, just that the story wasn't sufficent to pull me in.

The music in this film was also a bit off-putting to me. Every time that sax riff would play it would jerk me out of the film, and it just didn't seem to fit to me.

Basically, this movie felt to me like it was an action movie that only had about 5 minutes of actual action. Everything else was just buildup to that moment. I think I would have liked it better had that action been a bit larger in scale but as it was it felt a bit anti-climactic (did I spell that right?).

I give it 4 awkward advice scenes out of 10.

~Matt