Taxi!

"I'd like to catch up with him one day, I'll pay him off with lumps"

This early Cagney vehicle (if you'll forgive the pun) is a fairly unambitious potboiler about taxi company rivalries turned bitter and violent. At first the film promises to explore the growing trend of cab-hiring in the changing city of 1930s New York but then it turns gangster-lite, trading on Cagney's outburst of fame after The Public Enemy (released just one year earlier in 1931).



It's pretty paint-by-numbers stuff, Cagney plays Matt - a New York cabbie just trying to make a buck. A 'good' guy is shown getting thrown into prison for killing a bad guy near the beginning to establish the rules of the film, and soon the 'taxi war' (in a roundabout way) leads to the death of Matt's brother - which in turns leads to a kind of humourless farce where Matt's girl Sue (Loretta Young) tries to prevent him from getting revenge in order to keep him out of gaol.



The taxis-bullying-other-taxis plotline seems to disappear halfway through the film in order to let Matt's vendetta take centrestage. The taxi stuff isn't even a backdrop to this story by the film's end, it's fairly innocuous really - just a bunch of scenes with no real social context despite fertile grounds for such a subtext. It becomes a wiseguy-romance without any warning, the whole film is just a brief mix of action and romance made to cash in on Cagney's popularity and tough-talking.



To be fair, Cagney is a lot of fun to watch. His talent shines through the ages, and in this case he even cries on screen. He always makes interesting acting choices in the way he delivers dialogues or acts out a scene - he has this big energy but he also isn't afraid to underplay, which just draws our attention to him all the more. In Taxi! he's a headstrong rabble-rouser, a cocky and mouthy little guy with anger issues. It's fun watching Matt want to bust heads but having to be nice for the sake of his girl.



The appeal of Cagney in the 1930s was that he as a bold man for audiences to idolise in an era of poverty and depression. This is why he comes across without humility and always ready to knock someone's block off - it seems odd to modern audiences accustomed with heroes who act with restraint, but the Cagney protagonist was a 'don't-tread-on-me' self-made hero (or anti-hero) for Americans to look up to while times were tough.



Anyway, as usual I digress, this film is full of some silly character motivations and plotholes. Actually, there isn't much of a plot at all. Taxi! is a minor Cagney film that shows him consolidating his success after initial breakout as a superstar.



DIRECTOR: Roy Del Ruth

WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Kubec Glasmon and John Bright. Based on a play by Kenyon Nicholson.

KEY ACTORS: James Cagney, Loretta Young, Guy Kibbee, George E. Stone, George Raft



RELATED TEXTS:

- The play The Blind Spot by Kenyon Nicholson.

- Cagney shot to fame after The Public Enemy.