Casino

We have now come to the final review of “Scorsese/De Niro month,” and boy, are we in for a tremendous piece of work. Once again I apologize for posting this late, but I when I was just going to sit down and write this blog, I was called to do something. Anyways, let’s start the review.

If the Mafia didn’t exist, I guess you could argue that it would be necessary to make up a Mafia group.

That statement can also be used when talking about Las Vegas. The late Roger Ebert said, “There is a universal need to believe in an outfit that exists outside the rules and can get things done.”

Ebert continued by saying, “There's a related need for a place where the rules are suspended, where there's no day or night, where everything has a price, where if you're lucky, you go home a millionaire. Of course, people who go to Vegas lose money, and people who deal with the mob, regret it. But hope is what we're talking about. Neither the mob nor Vegas could exist if most people weren't optimists.”

Martin Scorsese’s eighth, and to this day, final collaboration with Robert De Niro “Casino,” released in 1995, knows a lot about the relationship the Mafia has with Las Vegas. It’s based on a Nicholas Pileggi book, the same man who had full access to a man who once ran four casinos for the mob, and whose true story is inspired in the plot to this movie.

Life “The Godfather,” it makes us feel like eavesdroppers in a secret place.

The movie opens with a car bombed, with Sam “Ace” Rothstein floating through the cloud of fire. The movie explains how this event occurred to this man. The first hour is like a documentary. The narration is done by Rothstein, played by Robert De Niro, and other characters, explaining how the mob browsed millions out of the casinos.

It’s an interesting process. If you could guess that you had the ability to steal 25 percent of the slot-machine take – what would you do with all of those coins? How would you transfer them into cash that could be stuffed into the weekly suitcase for delivery to the mob in Kansas City? The answer lies within the movie. It also knows how to browse from the other games, and from food service and the gift shops. And it knows how the casinos don’t like to be stolen from.

There’s an incident where a man is cheating at blackjack, and a couple of security guards go up to him and stab him with a stun gun.

He collapses, the security guards call for medical attention, and dash him away to a small room where they crush his fingers with a mallet and he admits that he made a very bad mistake.

Rothstein, who is based on a real-life person named Frank (Lefty) Rosenthal, starts out as a sports oddsmaker in Chicago, gets the attention of the mob because he is intelligent in handling numbers and is given the position to run casinos because he looks like the right guy who will encourage the Vegas people to continue coming in and losing their money. He is the man who loathes unnecessary trouble. Sadly he comes across that trouble one day in a high-priced girl named Ginger McKenna, played by the very lovely and beautiful Sharon Stone.

Scorsese shows him seeing Ginger on a TV security monitor and instantly being hit by Cupid’s arrow that the image becomes a freeze-frame.

Ace showers her with gifts, which she is happy to have, but when he proposes to her, she denies. She has been in a relationship with a pimp, played by the great James Woods, since she was a child, and she doesn’t want to quit her profession. Rothstein will make her an offer that she cannot back off from. They come in the form of cars, diamonds, furs, a home with a pool and the key to his safety-deposit box. They get married, and it becomes Ace’s first mistake.

The second mistake was meeting Nicky Santoro, played by Joe Pesci, when they were both kids in Chicago. Nicky is a thief and a killer, who comes to Vegas, forms a crew and throws his weight around. After he squeeze’s a guy’s head in a vise, news spreads that he’s the mob enforcer. Even though that isn’t true, people still believe it, and soon Nicky’s name is being linked with Ace in every newspaper. There’s a very powerful scene of Nicky and Ace in the desert when Nicky says to him (I will censor out the words), “Where do you get off talking to people about me behind my back, going over my head? You said I’m bringing heat on YOU?” There are so many F bombs dropped in this scene that you have to watch it to know. Also is another scene when Nicky threatens a banker that he would crack his skull in half because he doesn’t care about prison and he is “that” stupid.

Scorsese tells his story with the energy and pacing he’s well-known for, and with a boatload of little details that feel just right. Not only the details of cheap 1970s period decoration, but little moments such as when Ace orders the casino cook to put “exactly the same amount of blueberries in every muffin.” Or when airborne feds are circling a golf course while spying on the hoods, and their plane runs out of gas and they have to make an emergency landing right on the grass.

And when vital evidence is found because of a low-level hood kept a record of his costs. And when Ace hosts a weekly show on local TV – and reveals a talent for juggling.

Meanwhile, Ginger starts drinking, and Ace is worried about their child. They both start to have public fights, and Ginger turns to Nicky for some advice that soon becomes comfort. When Ace finds out she may be fooling around, he says a line in the most perfect way ever, “I just hope it’s not somebody who I think it may be.” The narrator then says, “It was the last time the street guys would be given such an opportunity.” All the mob had to do was to take care of business. However, when Ace met Ginger and Nicky came to town, the pieces were all in place for the mob to become the biggest loser in Vegas history. Nicky says a line that I will censor since I want to make this blog swear free, “We screwed up good.” Scorsese gets the feel, the mood, almost the smell of the city just about perfect. De Niro and Pesci occupy their roles with unconscious confidence, Stone’s call girl is her best performance, and supporting cast includes comedian Alan King, the best insult-comic Don Rickles, impressionist Kevin Pollak, Frank Vincent, L.Q. Jones, John Bloom, Dick Smothers, Vinny Vella, and Pasquale Cajano.

Unlike his other Mafia movies, “Casino” is as concerned with history as with plot and character. The city of Las Vegas is his subject, and he shows how acceptable people like Ace, Ginger and Nicky to grow, and then spit them out, because the Vegas machine is too commercial and powerful to allow anyone to slow its operation. Ebert gives a history lesson by telling us, “When the Mafia, using funds from the Teamsters union, was ejected in the late 1970s, the 1980s ushered in a new source of financing: junk bonds.” The guys who had those on them might be the inspiration for the sequel. “The big corporations took over,” the narrator sadly views. “Today, it looks like Disneyland,” which brings us to our opening segment. In a way, people need to believe that a town like Las Vegas is run by guys like Ace and Nicky.

In a place that breaks rules, maybe you can break some as well. For those who can think like a gambler, it’s actually less comforting to know that giant corporations, financed by bonds and run by accountants, operate the Vegas machines. They know all the odds, and the house always wins. With Ace in charge, who know what might happen?

My rating for this film is also a 10. It’s my absolute favorite of the all the films that I have reviewed in the month, and another one of my absolute favorite films. Thank you for joining in on this month, and I hope you have enjoyed. Stay tuned for more of my reviews.

Cape Fear (1991)

With “Cape Fear,” director Martin Scorsese brings honor back to this 1991 remake. He lights up this renewal of the original with original brilliance.

The 1962 original film noir classic was tight and simple. Scorsese’s version is not less tight, but several times more complex. Desson Howe of the Washington Post Staff Writer said in his review, “In this hyperbolic era of knife-wielding Glenn Closes and indestructible Terminators, Scorsese ups the ante for '90s sensibilities yet never loses his directorial integrity.” In other words, I think this version is superior to the original, which isn’t very often that I will say that.

“Cape Fear” also makes a real performance by Robert De Niro. As the psychotic monster with vengeance on his mind, he’s the movie’s waiting, all-powerful spirit. Howe described De Niro as, “a tattooed, avenging angel of prime-evil justice.” Along with Mr. De Niro, we have solid performances by Nick Nolte and Jessica Lange as the couple that De Niro wants to get payback from. At the end, they tear at each other with convincing desperation.

A few of the original cast members from the original 1962 version make emotionally satisfying cameos, and they are Robert Mitchum, the late Gregory Peck and Martin Balsam. However, the surprise performance is from Juliette Lewis, the one who plays Nolte’s daughter. Thanks to the tactics made by De Niro, she goes from troubled teenager to a woman in a swaying series of stages.

On the direct level, “Cape Fear” is your basic revenge story. De Niro has been behind bars for 14 years, thanks to his attorney Nolte, who was defending De Niro in a rape-and-battery charge. Nolte had decided that his client was a rapist and contained an essential part of the evidence that would have saved De Niro. Now he is released and finds Nolte and his family in the Carolinas. A delicate but harsh harassment begins. With nothing that he can legally accuse De Niro of, Nolte has to take the law into his own hands.

Director Scorsese and screenwriter Wesley Strick turn this B-film noir into a fascinating ethics play. The movie’s filled with themes: Truth and deceit, good and evil, salvation and damnation, treachery and fidelity, freedom and imprisonment.

There are moral twists everywhere. No one is more honest and truth-obsessive than De Niro. Nolte at one part of the movie tells Lange that if he not “betrayed both of us, we might have been different people.”

De Niro is not the only one Nolte has to fight with. Nolte has to fight his own shadowy half. Along with betraying De Niro, he has a traveling eye with women, he treats his daughter roughly and he spoils in unstable legal moves.

“Cape Fear” also has a handful of intimate tensions. A mention of necrophilia and incest gives Nolte and sudden intimate desire for his wife. He’s also just a little too strange when he sees Lewis lying around in a T-shirt and underwear. When Nolte leaves his wife at home alone (with De Niro stalking outside), Lange replies angrily, "What about a weapon, in case things get exciting around here?"

The primary intimacy in this movie is between De Niro and Lewis. Howe stated in his review, “To Nolte's horror, the white-trash jailbird coaxes her effortlessly into an erotic transformation.” In one of the most nail-biting scenes, De Niro (pretending to be a teacher) draws in Lewis to a theater in the school’s basement. He attracts her with a kindness that she doesn’t even receive at home. You could say that this is Scorsese’s view of the Big Bad Wolf.

There are moments of intense and sudden violence. A large part of a victim’s cheek is bitten off. At one of the climatic moments, Nolte’s family literally slips and slides in blood. The movie is also filled with severely amusing touches. When Lange calls De Niro repulsive, he responds, “I understand. I'm not your type.” When Nolte at first refuses to extreme revenge against De Niro, Joe Don Baker, who plays the hired detective, says, “The only thing excessive would be to gut him and eat his liver.”

Scorsese changes the tension and expresses the darkest suggestions at exciting, brief edited speed. The cat-and-mouse tensions are all building up to the epic conclusion in a houseboat in spinning water. With Scorsese at the helm, this isn’t just a final battle in a bad storm. It’s the awesome, soul-shattering turmoil of the Last Judgment.

Much like in “Taxi Driver,” where De Niro had a quote that he would forever be remembered for, in this film, he had another quote that was made famous: “Come out, come out wherever you are.” I would also give this film a 10 because it’s another one of my favorites. Stay tuned next week for the conclusion of “Scorsese/De Niro month.”

Note: I was just about to write this when I was called for a task that took a couple of hours, so I apologize.

Cape Fear (1962)

Since I had given away what I was going to review this week, I thought that I would first review the original version of the film released in 1962, “Cape Fear.” This unpleasant but suspenseful film noir is controlled with a steady hand by J. Lee Thompson and is based on the novel The Executioners by John D. MacDonald. James R. Webb was responsible for the chillingly tight screenplay that plays on the terror a family man faces while trying to not only protect himself, but his family as well.

After he has served his eight-year term in a Baltimore prison for a vicious rape and assault, psychopath Max Cady, played by Robert Mitchum, is set free, clearly without parole (which messes up your head), and goes straight to the rural small-town in Georgia (filmed near Savannah) to confront and make a nightmare for the family man and famous lawyer Sam Bowden (the late Gregory Peck), his wife Peggy (Polly Bergen), and his teenage daughter Nancy (Lori Martin). Max is out for revenge on Sam because he was a key witness at the trial that sent him to prison.

Once Max has stalked them and has been harassed by strong-armed methods by the police under Sam’s good friend, the chief of police, Mark Dutton, played by Martin Balsam, the court interferes on the side of the stalker and Sam finds out that his establishment records can’t stop Max from contacting him until he breaks the law – just being intimidating and sinister won’t be enough for causing the authorities to jump on quickly. For further protection Sam hires private detective Charles Sievers, played by Detective Kojak himself, Telly Savalas. However, that does not stop Max because he poisons Sam’s dog and makes gestures towards Nancy. When Sam can’t get Max to leave town, especially by bribing him with $20,000, he decides to take action by trapping this ex-con man by hiding Peggy and Nancy in his river houseboat in Cape Fear. He imagines that Max will come after them, hence getting this ex-con caught in the act of breaking the law; Sam will send Max back to prison for life.

This film shows flaws with the judicial system exposing how such a threat to the people has the ability to avoid the law and use it to make life unbearable for the good citizen. It shockingly shows how tolerable the law is and that the citizen has been brought to a point that violence is the only way he can protect his very own family.

Bernard Herrmann handled his scary score which effectively sets the mood, which is tensing. Mitchum’s arrogant life of an evil role, a put back from his role in “Night of the Hunter,” plays well as a balance to the scared but strong Peck role as the protector of his family by any means necessary – implying at its most insignificant the good bourgeois thinking.

In the end, I would say this film does show the effort, and is bone-chilling. I would rate this film with an 8. Check in for Friday when I review the 1991 Scorsese remake.

Goodfellas

Sorry about doing this late, I got hung up with a few things that I completely forgot about today’s review. No, it will not be “The King of Comedy,” because I have not seen that. Let’s just skip to 1990 with one of the best gangster movies ever made, “Goodfellas.” In this film, director Martin Scorsese does something simple and risky. He takes the guilt out of organized crime. The movie, a brutally open, part-comic epic about life in the mob, follows the path of Henry Hill, played by the great but creepy-looking Ray Liotta, an Irish-Sicilian Brooklyn kid who suggests himself into the local section of the Mafia and grows up to become a clever and devoted “wise guy.” Henry’s reasons for getting himself into the Mafia could not have been made any clearer. The local gangsters get whatever they want – money, women, respect. They wear great clothes, are treated like kings in the nightclubs, and spend most of their time in an independent dreamworld of pleasure and animal nature. Why shouldn’t Henry want to join?

Most movies about criminal figures have a serious arc. We watch the hero rise and fall, a victim of his own environment. Scorsese has brought off the rare act of making a legitimately dishonorable film. “Goodfellas” is 2 hours and 15 minutes long, yet it’s little more than a successful series of incidents. We watch the charming, know-how Henry persuade his moneymaking methods (most of them involve stealing huge loads of merchandise), marry a beautiful Long Island Jewish girl, played by Lorraine Bracco, who’s turned on by his criminal behavior, mess around to his heart’s content, assist in vicious executions, do time in an extremely comfortable jail, get hooked on drugs, fall into a final feudal war focusing on his trusted partner Jimmy Conway, played by Robert De Niro. Throughout, Scorsese maintains a tone of bright, driving objectivity. That is the film’s strength and its limitation.

Scene for scene, “Goodfellas” is often exciting. Scorsese, adapting from Nicholas Pileggi’s 1986 novel Wiseguy (the two of them worked together on the screenplay), draws us into the natural excitement of Henry’s world even as he shows us the shocking bursts of violence that push it. It shows a mob family, headed by Paul Cicero, played by Paul Sorvino. At one point, Henry is hanging out with the boys at the local bar when his gang, the slithering, bullying Tommy DeVito, played by Joe Pesci, decides to cause a little trouble. Pesci gives a masterful performance as a vulgarly fearless, paranoid shrimp that’s constantly in need of demonstrating his own power. Scorsese is better than any other director in bringing out the casual unreasonableness of those who live by violence. As Pesci beats a perfectly innocent restaurant owner the moment increases into brutal, slapstick humor. Pesci is also famous in this movie for tricking Liotta in the famous "How am I funny? You mean I'm funny like a clown? I amuse you, I make you laugh? Is that what I'm here to do?"

Owen Gleiberman said in his review, “Yet even as I was caught up in scenes like this, something stuck in my craw.” Liotta’s smiling; diplomatic Henry is presented as a smooth operator, a basically good guy who’s in love with crime because he wants to live high. A movie devoted to the pleasure-seeking tempt of criminality is all well and good (in a sense, anything else would be hypocritical), yet it’s essential that we understand how Henry reduces himself – to feel the price he pays.

Indeed, Scorsese takes the easy way out. It’s not just Henry who’s made inactive; the whole movie is made inactive. It shows us people being killed in bloody, awful ways, yet we’re never asked to respond to victims as human beings (as we were in “The Godfather”). In this sense, we’re “inside” the consciousness of a mobster only in a clinical, abstract way.

Scorsese got deep inside the vicious antiheroes of “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull.” Here, it’s almost as if he is inventing a schoolboy fantasy of ruthless evil. “GoodFellas” is brilliant surface moviemaking, but it’s hollow at the center. The trouble with the movie is that Liotta’s Henry has no inner life as a character. Scorsese borrows a great deal of narration for Pileggi’s book (in the final section, it sounds like the book is being read aloud), yet that’s not the same as performing your hero’s soul. “Goodfellas” yearns to be another great Scorsese film. What’s missing is Scorsese’s humanity.

With all this said, I would definitely give “Goodfellas” another 10, as it is another one of my favorites. Stay tuned next week for both the original version and Scorsese remake of “Cape Fear.” That’s going to be enjoyable to review.

Raging Bull

Now we come to the second entry of Scorsese/De Niro month, the 1980 boxing epic, “Raging Bull.” I bet you all were expecting “New York, New York,” but I haven’t seen that one. So let’s get started with “Raging Bull,” which is another one of my absolute favorites.

He is as tough as nails in 1941, a real comer in boxing. But no one wants to fight him. This is none other than The Bronx Bull himself, Jake La Motta, played by Robert De Niro. His brother Joey, played by Joe Pesci, is his manger, who takes all of the insults, moods, and rages. The Mob wants a piece of that action but La Motta insists on being his own man. He is addicted by wanting to be middleweight champion of the world. The Bull snorts. The Mob perseveres. Once La Motta tells one of the Mob members, Salvy Batts, played by Frank Vincent, the will throw a fight to get a shot at the title, the Mob becomes happy. In 1948, La Motta wins the title.

In the ring he takes all of the punches and returns them twofold. People call him a cruel fighter. His first wife cannot take this violent man. La Motta falls in love with a 15-year-old girl named Vickie, played by Cathy Moriarty. Vickie is a blond beauty that men desire to be with and speak in hushed tones about her behind her back. Both of them marry and have a family, giving La Motta the power of being seen with a classy woman. However, that recognition isn’t enough, since he becomes jealous. He constantly is abusing her verbally and physically that she is sleeping around with other men behind his back. When Joey tries to reason with Jake, Jake turns against his brother, and their relationship is tarnished over this anger.

Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat stated in their review of this film, “Anger is a fury that is hard to extinguish once it is loose. Jealousy is a worm that eats away at the innards.” “Raging Bull” is more than a screen biography of Jake La Motta, more than an intense look at the sport of boxing, more than a sociological inspection of the Italian Catholic setting of the Bronx. The screenplay by Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin is about a giant passion – the complex, wild, crazy ones which bring a person to discover the worst that is in them.

Once La Motta climbs to the top, he loses it all. Sugar Ray Robinson, an opponent and enemy of his that he has boxed before, played by Johnny Barns, beats him positively. La Motta then quits boxing and becomes the manager of a shady nightclub in Miami. Vickie leaves him and he gets thrown in jail for moral charges. He is finally caged, deserted by everyone. All alone with his own self, self-destructed, he bangs his head up against the wall crying, “Why? Why? I’m not an animal!”

Jake then gives himself a rebirth, going beyond his own death. In a closing scene, he is now some sort of a philosopher, preparing for a 1964 appearance at the Barbizon Plaza Hotel Theatre where he does passages from Chayefsky, Schulberg, Shakespeare, and others. This is also where De Niro quotes Brando from “On the Waterfront.”

“Raging Bull” is not an easy film to watch with its bloody fight sequences, rough martial arguments, and quiet environments. It doesn’t give you that good feeling that “Rocky” did. Actually, it’s pretty much the polar opposite of “Rocky” when you think about it. However, the performance of De Niro deserves an Academy Award. He really knows how to dig deep into the elemental strength of an unlikable character and carries the audience up to the point where the unwilling respect for the man’s determined spirit is given. Scorsese has given another award winning quality performance from Joe Pesci as the brother. He also deserves credit for making Cathy Moriarty’s acting debut a positive one. “Raging Bull” also deserves a 10+.

Check in next week for the third entry of this month.

On the Waterfront

Today I am going to look at a very classic film from 1954. It’s one of the best films ever made and is also another one of my favorites. I’m talking about none other than the magnificent “On the Waterfront.”

Marlon Brando, who I have to say, was the best actor for his time, plays Terry Malloy, an ex-Prize Fighter who is fighting with his conscience and bumped off one of his co-workers, played by Ben Wagner, for the union boss Johnny Friendly, played by the great Lee J. Cobb. Malloy is a slight mess of half-formed emotions.

His strange love moments with Eva Marie Saint, who plays his co-worker’s sister, Edie, show, as described by Empire, “the new-fangled Method acting at its most controlled and poetic.” The famous scene when Terry is in the cab with his brother Charlie, played by Rod Steiger, is the highlight of the movie. This is the famous scene where Brando says to Steiger, “I could have been a contender, I could have been somebody, instead of just a bum, which is what I am.” Hats off to screenwriter Budd Schulberg, and his speech for the priest, played by Karl Malden, in the loading bay is still moving.

Once you add the acting/writing epics, Leonard Bernstein’s calm score, and a striking, dark look by cinematographer Boris Kaufman, you have a sad picture of labor relations that crawls into your skin and feels like it’s chewing you alive. You will still feel that after the 60 years this film was released.

Empire feels that “It's hard to like it that much, however, when you realize director Elia Kazan and writer Budd Schulberg made it after they ratted on their pals to the McCarthy commission and needed to do a picture about how informers were noble, brave souls facing up to oppression rather than sneaky squealers saving their careers.” I still feel that this film holds up very well today and is a classic that should be seen by everyone. It’s one of Brando’s finest performances he has ever done, and you should see it if you know or don’t know about Brando.

In the end, I give this film a solid 10. You’re probably wondering why I reviewed this film today. It’s very similar to the film that I will review this Friday, and you may already know which film I am talking about. Stay tuned this Friday to find out (if you don’t know what I will review).

Taxi Driver

Happy New Year everyone! Let’s kick off the year with a month review of the two greatest powerhouses who come together and make great films. I’m talking about none other than one of the best directors, Martin Scorsese, and one of the best actors, Robert De Niro. Now bear in mind that this will be films that I have seen, since I have not seen all eight films they collaborated on. With that said, I haven’t seen “Mean Streets,” so I will instead skip to the 1976 amazing film, and one of my favorites, “Taxi Driver.”

The steam flying up around the manhole in the street is a dead giveaway. Manhattan is a thin cement lid over the entrance to Satan's home, which is also full of cracks. Hookers, hustlers, pimps, pushers, frauds, and freaks – they’re all at their peak. They form a busy, faceless, shameless society that knows a secret list. On a hot summer night that cement lid becomes an uncontrollable rant written in neon: walk, stop, go, come, drink, eat, try, enjoy. Wait a minute…enjoy? That’s not likely. Only the faceless ones who you look at as utter filth could enjoy it.

This is what Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro, might write in his diary. Travis, a lonely man who comes from another place, drives a Manhattan cab at night. By day he sleeps a little, takes pills to calm himself down, drinks peach brandy, which he sometimes pours on his breakfast cereal, and goes to adult films to relax. At a certain time he is aware that his headaches are worse and he speculates that he may have stomach cancer.

Travis Bickle is the hero in “Taxi Driver.” He’s as crazy as they are, a psychotic, but played by De Niro as a fascinating character residing in a place that’s his creation as much as he is the creation of it.

Vincent Canby of the New York Times said, “Taxi Driver is in many ways a much more polished film than Mr. Scorsese's other major Manhattan movie, Mean Streets, but its polish is what ultimately makes it seem less than the sum of its parts.” The original screenplay was done by Paul Schrader, who was new at the time, and he enforces a smart plan on Travis’s story that finally makes it too simple. It steals the mystery from the film. Canby says, “At the end you may feel a bit cheated, as you do when the solution of a whodunit fails to match the grandeur of the crime.”

Until that last moment “Taxi Driver” is a vivid, electrifying portrait of a character so particular that you will be surprised that he makes constant dramatic sense. Canby comments, “Psychotics are usually too different, too unreliable, to be dramatically useful except as exotic decor.”

Travis Bickle – a character designed by the actor, writer, and director – remains one of the greatest characters ever portrayed from beginning to end, probably because he is more of a character who is crazy. He is the person who shows us our nightmares of urban isolation, treated in a performance that is effective as much for what De Niro does to this character. This kind of acting is rarely seen. This is talent, which one gets in theater, as well as from behavior, which is what movies normally give the viewers.

If De Niro was not so good of an actor, Travis would be your usually sideshow freak. The screenplay gives him plenty of time to work with the character, thankfully. Until the final moments, “Taxi Driver” has a type of hyper lack of direction that is a direct reflection of Travis’s mind, capable of eruptions of common sense and discipline that are separated when he is confused. Travis writes in his diary, “I don’t believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention,” and then sets out to make a name for him by plotting a murder of a politician.

Travis is a buildup of self-destruct instruments. He befriends a pretty, smart campaign worker, played by Cybill Shepherd (who Canby says “recoups the reputation lost in At Long Last Love”), but wonders why she is appalled when he takes her to see one of his favorite adult films. Canby describes Travis’s mind as “full of crossed wires and short circuits.”

There is a point in the film (which I will not say or else I will give away the plot) where is questionable, but the rest of the film works. The supporting cast, which is always seen in Scorcese movies, is just great. They include Jodie Foster as a teenage hustler, Harvey Keitel as her pimp, and Peter Boyle as a confused Manhattan cab driver.

You may want to argue with “Taxi Driver” at the end, and with good reasons, but you won’t waste your time with it. Go see the film if you haven’t, you will love it. Especially since this film has the famous De Niro line where he looks in his mirror and says, “You talkin’ to me?” This film deserves a solid 10.

I hope you enjoyed the first entry to Scorcese/De Niro month. Stay tuned next week when I review the next film of these two juggernauts.