Product Description

4 Academy Award® nominations including Best Picture! (1976) Special Collector's Edition is digitally remastered and includes a never-before-seen making-of documentary featuring interviews with the creators and stars of the film. Robert De Niro stars with Jodie Foster Cybill Shepherd Harvey Keitel Peter Boyle and Albert Brooks in the all-too-real story of a psychotic New York cabby who is driven to violence in an attempt to rescue a teenage prostitute.System Requirements:Running Time: 114 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 043396174047 Manufacturer No: 17404

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2187 in DVD
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2007-08-14
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Limited Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 114 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
Taxi Driver is the definitive cinematic portrait of loneliness and alienation manifested as violence. It is as if director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader had tapped into precisely the same source of psychological inspiration ("I just knew I had to make this film," Scorsese would later say), combined with a perfectly timed post-Watergate expression of personal, political, and societal anxiety. Robert De Niro, as the tortured, ex-Marine cab driver Travis Bickle, made movie history with his chilling performance as one of the most memorably intense and vividly realized characters ever committed to film. Bickle is a self-appointed vigilante who views his urban beat as an intolerable cesspool of blighted humanity. He plays guardian angel for a young prostitute (Jodie Foster), but not without violently devastating consequences. This masterpiece, which is not for all tastes, is sure to horrify some viewers, but few could deny the film's lasting power and importance. --Jeff Shannon

On the DVDs
Columbia/TriStar's two-disc Collector's Edition of Taxi Driver represents a quantum leap over the single-disc Collector's Edition from 1999. On disc 1, Martin Scorsese's 1976 masterpiece has been remastered in high definition, and is once again presented in its accurate 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio. The all-new commentary by screenwriter Paul Schrader occupies less than half of the film's total running time, but Schrader's comments are wide-ranging and richly informative regarding the origins of the film's titular character Travis Bickle, why Schrader chose that name for the character ("a clash of romantic and harsh"), the necessity of favoring images over words, collaborating with Scorsese and Robert De Niro, and various matters of theme, character, and dialogue. Also new to this release is the full-length commentary by University of Virginia media studies Professor Robert Kolker (author of the acclaimed book A Cinema of Loneliness), who brings an academic depth of analysis to the film, with emphasis on composition, structure, repeated motifs and images, and the visual and thematic influences of Hitchcock (especially Psycho), John Ford (The Searchers), Jean-Luc Godard, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With additional details relating to production history and Scorsese's other films, Kolker's commentary is the next best thing to attending a master's class on Taxi Driver. Also on disc 1: A handy interactive feature allows viewers to seamlessly switch from the film itself to corresponding pages of Schrader's original screenplay.

Disc 2 is loaded with over three hours of special features, beginning with "Scorsese on Taxi Driver" (16:52), in which the director discusses the origins of the project (fellow director Brian De Palma brought Schrader's script to Scorsese), the personal impact of the material, proving his skills to producers Michael and Julia Phillips (and thus securing financing from Columbia), and various other aspects of production. In "Producing Taxi Driver" (9:53), Michael Phillips relates the process of discovering Schrader's screenplay, attracting Scorsese as director, getting the film green-lit by Columbia, assuming the role of on-set producer (while his wife, the late Julia Phillips, served as studio liaison), and appreciating the film's critical and commercial success and long-term influence. In the fascinating 21-minute featurette "God's Lonely Man," Prof. Kolker examines the loneliness themes that dominate the film, and Schrader discusses the personal hardships that led him to write the screenplay during a two-week stay in an ex-girlfriend's empty apartment in Los Angeles. "Influence and Appreciation" is an 18-minute tribute to Scorsese, featuring interviews with De Niro, Oliver Stone (a student of Scorsese's at NYU film school), Roger Corman (producer of Scorsese's early feature Boxcar Bertha), Cybill Shepherd, Albert Brooks, Jodie Foster and others. In the 22-minute featurette "Taxi Driver Stories," several past-and-present New York taxi drivers share colorful anecdotes about driving cabs in the 1970s, the way the industry has changed since then, and the various pleasures and difficulties of driving taxis in New York City.

Disc 2 continues with "Making Taxi Driver," a 70-minute documentary carried over from the 1999 single-disc Collector's Edition. It remains the definitive documentary about the film's production, featuring interviews with all of the primary cast and crew including cinematographer Michael Chapman and legendary make-up effects master Dick Smith. "Travis' New York" is a six-minute featurette about the state of New York (especially Times Square) during the Taxi Driver era of the mid-1970s, featuring interviews with former New York mayor Ed Koch and others. "Travis' New York Locations" is a split-screen comparison feature showing then-and-now footage of nine Taxi Driver locations from 1975 (when the film was shot) and 2006. (You'll be surprised by some of the differences, while other locations remain almost completely unchanged). In a 4-minute introduction, Scorsese discusses the vital importance of his original storyboards (in terms of on-set preparedness, etc.), and the "Storyboard to Film Comparison" (8:20) clearly demonstrates how the director's crude yet well-organized drawings were (in most cases) precisely translated into cinematic images. When using the "Play All" option, the photo galleries run as a 9-minute slide-show arranged in four categories (Bernard Herrmann's Score, On Location, Publicity Materials, and Scorsese on Location). --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Terribly overrated
Bad acting, lame story and very poor execution. It could have been good if carried out right but it moves too slowly. The dialogue doesn't make much sense and it's like Martin was just killing film time by having the actors talk slowly so they had less to write. Nothing brilliant about this film, 1/5

A slum-land superhero for realists.
Martin Scorsese, the writer/director of the Taxi Driver, has admitted that this film is the cathartic result of a bevy of dark thoughts that surrounded his mind during a very low period of his life. By the time the credits finally make their merciful way on screen, we can see exactly what Scorsese saw during those days and the residual effect it has on us, the viewers, will likely stay hauntingly familiar long after we have watched the conclusion of this film.

PLOT:

Tavis Bickle, a taxi driver and volunteer for a New York City political campaign, has tried it all. He's attempted doing things the right way, treating people with kindness and women with respect. Nevertheless, he is ignored and his chivalrous advances continually stepped upon or altogether discarded by one person after another. It is when Tavis realizes that he will forever be average and overlooked that he decides to make drastic changes in his world. Almost at once he begins driving the most dangerous portions of New York in his taxi, scouring the nighttime landscape with his mind cultivating a solution to his own personal, dark problems. Soon, his decision becomes conclusive: he will become a vigilante, and his first offering to the world will be in aiding a young teenaged prostitute by providing her a way out, no matter what it may cost Tavis personally in the process.

Perhaps Scorsese's most poignant film, The Taxi Driver offers a bleak, but somehow refreshing, alternative to the concept of "taking it lying down." Here, in his vision, there is another solution, and one in which while many of us fantasize about, almost all of us refuse to make a reality.

4.5 out of 5

"All the animals come out at night......."
This is the main observation of Travis Bickle, rookie NYC cab driver who has recently returned from active duty in the Viet Nam war. He cruises the mean and scummy skid row streets on the midnight shift, loathing the locals while he steals from his employer by "doing it off the meter".

Played by Robert De Niro (in what must be his twenties), Travis exudes all the makings of a spring wound too tight and ready to explode into a million pieces. Obvious signs of post traumatic stress including dependence on drugs and alcohol, inability to relate to "normal" people back in the USA, combined with a repulsion of those "night animal people" he services with his taxi, latent racist tendencies, and an underlying contempt for authority and the society who seemed indifferent to the war or those in it create a character who is a walking time bomb with many potential targets to choose from to vent his rage. It is a rage that simmers just beneath the surface and is never physically visible to those around him.



"She appeared like an angel out of this filthy mess."

Travis's first sighting of Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) was nicely photographed in slow motion. He finds a way to meet and charm her into having lunch with him. He asks her to a movie, she agrees and he now has an opportunity to have a relationship with a smart and beautiful woman. But on his way to the date the music is somber and we see Travis plodding slowly toward what we know will be a doomed encounter. The only world to Travis is fifty square blocks of seedy, dirty, crime infested neighborhoods including the local porno theatre where (to Betsy's horror) Travis takes her for their movie date. He thought it would be okay because "lots of couples go there". He wasn't trying to be salacious; he just didn't know any better. She leaves abruptly. Across the street from the porno theatre is a regular movie house showing regular movies.

He sends her flowers numerous times, phones to ask forgiveness and another date. This scene is probably the most pivotal and one of the best scenes in the movie. As he is going down in flames and it is too painful to watch, the camera mercifully and slowly pans away, focusing on the busy street outside as we can still hear the one way conversation. After he hangs up the phone his infatuation with Betsy is immediately over and he feels she has now become "cold and distant" and is "just like all the others."

The director, Martin Scorsese, makes a cameo appearance as an unhappy and creepy fare that is stalking his cheating wife and plans to kill her for her infidelity. A young Peter Boyle has a small role as "Wizard" the street wise career cab driver who tries to console Travis with guidance and life philosophy when Travis (in his time of grief over losing Betsy) says to Wizard he wants to go out and "do bad things".



"He called you a little piece of chicken."

As Travis descends into madness, he once again encounters a child prostitute named "Easy", real name Iris, (played by a very young Jodie Foster) being used and exploited by a punk, street thug pimp (played by a very young Harvey Keitel). He tries to convince her that he will rescue her from her sordid life style. She is not interested.

At the same time Travis plots to kill the Presidential candidate (that Betsy was working for). The fact that she jilted him seems the only reason he wants to do that. After a bizarre conversation between Travis and a secret service agent at a supporter rally followed by a failed assination attempt, he escapes into the crowd. Once back at home he begins to feel that his real purpose in life at this time is to rescue Iris from the clutches of the scum he detests even if she is unwilling.

He illegally purchases many weapons, shaves his head into a Mohawk and sets out to administer justice, punishment, and do the "right thing" because "here is a man who stood up and wouldn't take it anymore".

The ending was not unexpected but did have some surprising and thought provoking twists. The soundtrack is haunting and the cinematography is terrific. Overly bright neon lights sometimes seen through a rain washed windshield or cruising the grungy, seedy, skid row streets that show the color of blood brighter than anything is a tribute to Scorsese's ability to put us right in it.


I have to agree with the American Film Institute that this is one of the best 100 films ever made. I think it is De Niro's best work followed by Goodfellas (also directed by Scorsese).