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The urban psycho-knight "like a ripe stool in the world's straining anus" (Osborne's Luther). New York the new Sodom, all steam and neon and garbage, the yellow vessel glides through it. The cabbie (Robert De Niro) is an ex-Marine, scarred and insomniac, an ascetic avenger in his own mind. "There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man." He haunts porno theaters but the movie that most repels and fascinates him is the one he projects through the widescreen of the taxi's windshield, smeary views of a hellish Times Square. (The theme includes a bit of shadow play with a furtive silhouette on a window, and there's Martin Scorsese himself in the backseat providing vehement commentary.) "I don't believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention." The illusory blonde (Cybill Shepherd) is a campaign worker for a presidential candidate, their first date is also their last, his squalid flat is filled with rejected floral bouquets and even the camera looks away from his desperate phone call. The child prostitute (Jodie Foster) is his other object of obsession, she has the same nickname as the weaselly dealer who arms him for the climactic annihilation. "One day there will be a knock on the door and it'll be me." Icy Paul Schrader blueprint, scalding Scorsese treatment. Ray's On Dangerous Ground figures in the paroxysmal construction as crucially as The Searchers and Diary of a Country Priest, a zoom into a glass of fizzing water turns Godard's cosmic coffee cup (2 or 3 Things I Know About Her) into a churning consciousness. Slow-motion and jump cuts and abrupt high angles are part of the arsenal, Bernard Herrmann's brass and sax glissandos give the city's heavy breathing. The clenched fist over the gas flame, the mohawked maniac who botches one assassination and finishes another to great acclaim, the time bomb reset. Bresson returns the compliment at the end of L'Argent, the carnage and its audience. Cinematography by Michael Chapman. With Harvey Keitel, Albert Brooks, Peter Boyle, Leonard Harris, Steven Prince, Victor Argo, and Joe Spinell.
--- Fernando F. Croce |