Chicago Cab

I saw this movie around Christmas 2002, it was about 02.00 am, I thought I'd make one more walk around the channels. Then I saw a guy in a cab on BBC, and the colors of the movie seemed okay -You know, when a movie is really dumb, or bad, it often has intense and bright colors-. I wasn't doing anything at the moment, so I left it on. Then I became more and more interested in it, and decided to turn of the computer and focus only on the movie. I think this is a movie that truly represents the spirit of Christmas, although I am still not sure what the hell that may be, I'm sure this is it. Paul Dillon, whom I did not know beforehand plays his character brilliantly. He's a quiet guy, who somehow got into the job of cabdriver. He has to work on Christmas-eve and he gets all these strange people in his cab who tell him about what happened to them lately, and that's it! Fantastic. From there you see him trying to say the right things, and that maybe is the most beautiful thing about this movie. The movie is really easy going, you can just sit, do nothing, just watch and let it pass by. Therefore, when watched alone, late at night, at Christmas-time, this is the perfect movie for the moment, and deserves 10 out of 10 points.

In Chicago we spend the day with the driving of a taxi who starts work at 6am, picking up a religious family and taking them to church. Throughout the day he has to deal with many different types of fare, from abusive boyfriends, drunken sports fans, adulterous colleagues and a woman who has been raped. He increasingly gets more and more impatient and distraught with what he sees in Chicago's life and he starts to get very tired as his shift reaches way past midnight on a freezing cold Christmas in Chicago.

This film had potential – lots of characters, lots of stories, lots of real people all come and go past our main character as he drives his cab, however it is all the more annoying for the fact that it is just a badly fragmented film where little bits sort of work, some bits could have worked and other bits are just clichéd and lazily written. Too many of the characters' stories just stop and their point is lost. This is a waste because there is such a wide variety of recognisable characters here that it is a shame that nothing of any interest is done with them. Some of the stories do work and have a minor impact but they are just lost in a film that lacks structure and seems content to be a patchwork of stories and nothing else. Of course, many better films have shown us that a variety of stories with a loose connection can work as a film, but this film fails to have a real central point that we can latch onto.

This point should have been the cabbie, but the film does a bad job with his character and I was never emotionally drawn into his life or his thoughts. Some of the individual stories are quite interesting but they are so truncated that they make no real impact. The cast try hard and I was impressed (surprised?) by just how many well known faces had signed up for the film. Dillon is OK but can't do much with the character – it feels like he is being given direction without understanding what his character feels. The rest of the cast are basically cameos and most of them aren't very good simply because they aren't given much to work with. Ironside, Metcalf, Reilly, Anderson, Cusack, Lennix, Moore and Hayes all show up but few of them can raise the material.

Overall this was an interesting film that had potential but fails to really deliver. It is a good idea and one that requires very good delivery to hold all these stories together and deliver an emotionally satisfying film at the end – however the film fails to do that and it is annoying for that reason. It is a failure but it is not totally without merit, but having said that, I could see no reason for me to ever want to see this again.

Don't let the box art or bad title change fool you (the movie was originally called "Chicago Cab"). This is not a B-horror movie, but an interesting and well done film about a day in the life of a cab driver. He spends the day going through a long shift and picking up all sorts of eccentric passengers. Although we don't really get to know much about the cab driver, the viewer nevertheless feels some sort of attachment to him. The last twenty minutes of the film (which starts with Julianne Moore's character and continues right to the end of the film) is alone worth the rental.

I recommend this movie for those who are looking for something a little different from the norm. I'm still mad though about how this film has been mismarketed.

I remember the night I watched Chicago Cab for the first time. It was a few years ago and it was around 3:00 A.M. As soon as I saw the cab park to pick up the coke head, I was hooked. This movie, in my opinion, can be seen any time of the year but the true effect is present on or around the Christmas season. In some odd way, you can relate this film to the holidays. Of course, the movie is set on the winter solstice which is near Christmas but it's more of a relation to the depression that people face near Christmas. In any event, this movie is a must see. Paul Dillon deserves a standing ovation from every individual that sees this movie. You can't really "connect" with the driver but, then again, you can. If you ever see Chicago Cab/Hell Cab on your cable guide screen, do not pass it by. Watch it.

A friend and I picked this movie for our usual Crappy Movie Friday, It's called Hellcab, the back says something about unusual/mysterious passengers, so you can't miss, right?

Well, it happened. Sure, we had planned for it, but we'd more or less forgotten our plan. "What if," we had figured, "what if we rent a movie that we -mistake- for a crappy movie and it turns out to be good?" That situation came up. We watched the movie in relative silence (as opposed to our usual nonstop riffage) and in the end found we really liked it. It wasn't horror at all. It wasn't anywhere near crappy. What to do?

We still don't know. But what I know anyway was that I really enjoyed it. The Cab Driver is a great actor and his facial expressions speak volumes. Oh, and John Cusack is hilarious and very creepy as the Scary Guy. (Too bad his role is so brief!)

Check this one out! Don't mistake it for a horror flick! 8.5 out of 10 on My Personal Scale.