AMG Review of Taxi Driver [1998]

Rick Watrous
All Music Guide

Bernard Herrmann's last soundtrack (completed just hours before he died in his sleep) is also one of his best -- which means one of the greatest scores ever put to film. This expanded 1998 reissue performs a public service by finally offering Herrmann's complete score for Taxi Driver in all of its harrowing grandeur. As director Martin Scorsese says in his insightful liner notes, "There was no one who could even come near him." Dave Blume's cover versions of Herrmann's melodies are again inexplicably included, proving that anything, even the epic themes of Bernard Herrmann, can be turned into Muzak.