Main cast: Samy Naceri (Daniel), Fredric Diefenthal (Emilien), Marion Cotillard (Lilly), and Emma Sjoberg (Petra), and Bernard Farcy (Commissaire Gérard Gibert)
Director: Gérard Pirès
I’ve never really sat through a no-brainer meant for the boys in the audience until I watched this 1998 French movie. Taxi has a surprising lack of logic or even coherence. It is driven solely by loud explosions and speeding race cars. The guys will probably have multiple orgasms watching this movie. Me, I can’t stop laughing at the absurdity of it all.
In real life, Daniel would have never get his taxi-driver’s license, much less be allowed out of the loony bin. This man, who unfortunately resembles a lecherous mastiff, drives his taxi as if he’s on the race track, pumped on helium. He delights in making his passengers puke their stomach contents out. Oh, and it was the same when he was a pizza delivery guy: this movie tells me that pizza delivery guys are all wonderful stuntmen that can do acrobatic maneuvers with their hogs. Obviously Hollywood is plumbing the wrong depths: instead of looking at Hong Kong they should be chasing the Pizza Hut guys.
One day Daniel makes a cop puke. Emilien books him, and Daniel asks him to shoot him because “without a license, he is dead”. Boys. Emilien wants to impress his female superior (who, instead of wearing practical pants while chasing baddies, wears a skirt with high split instead – I hope she doesn’t break her ankles while running in those high heels). It seems that a gang from Germany is terrorizing Marseilles, so what better way for Emilien to impress the lady boss into bed than to ask a taxi driver to help him catch the Gang, eh? (I told you to keep logic away while watching this movie.)
Every cop’s a fat, ugly, lazy buffoon except for our hero. Every taxi river’s cool (even though in real life these road menaces should be lobotomized) because he has great horsepower in his car engines. I’m surprised there is no bazooka or other penile-imagery in this movie. No wait, there is a bazooka.
Taxi isn’t even guilty pleasure material – the direction is aimless, Samy Naceri looks like he wants to pounce on Fredric Diefenthal and rip his clothes off, Mr Diefenthal looks like he wants to be anywhere else but this movie, and I just want it to end.
