The 2004 version of Taxi is Luc Besson's remake of his originally French series of Taxi movies featuring the previous star Samy Naceri, now with Queen Latiffa as lead character. The roles are pretty much all switched up since the old days aaand so is the location, it's now in New York!

A lot of people seem to have a lot of negative things to say about this movie: that the Americanization ruined the previous light-hearted humor, the change of locale didn't work very well, that it's trying to appeal to all types of audiences, and well, I agree with all of those points, but I still like it!

Even if it is Americanized, catered towards certain audiences and the overall atmosphere has been greatly renovated... it's a great movie. There's action, there's drama, there's romance (though mostly just relationship trouble) and there's definitely plenty of comedy. The actors all play their roles well, they're all charismatic, and the car chases certainly manage to seem faster than they are, so what's there to complain about? The only thing that really sucked is the cover.

It'll never be like the old Taxi movies, true, but disregarding previous titles this is one of the more entertaining action comedies of the year. Seems like everything Luc Besson makes is worth a watch; this is no exception.

 rated 4/5: fo shizzle

January, 2023

When there's a behind scene section with the actors actually having fun you know the characters have chemistry. :) It seemed like it was genuine in the movie, and I think it really was. Props Queen Latifah and Jimmy Fallon.
I feel a bit sorry for Adrian Martinez though - can't help those plosives!

The French version IS better but... this ain't bad. It's feelgood, it's fun, it stars a gang of model femme fatales (Gisele Bündchen, Ingrid Vandebosch and more) instead of male Germans, with re-occurring winks more so than crazy laughs - Jennifer Esposito plays the lieutenant too, a drunk mom and a lot more black leads than they had in the French one... what can you say, they went mainstream with this. And they Americanized it.

In some ways it does look better. The cars are fresher. The script seems streamlined compared to the previous. The views are nice - they have a good skyline cityscape scene with towers and close-up shots of bustling city streets too, and they managed to find an unfinished highway for the end scene - just like they did with the last one! The scenery's legit.

On the other hand the gunfights aren't half as ferocious, they clearly have wires on the scene with the bike jump onto the truck, and some of the driving scenes look very fake - like the turn in the alleyway, or the short interior run when they're fleeing the bank. Greenscreens through the car windows sometimes too.

The original didn't seem to have a single one of those. No fake scenes at all. Not that you noticed. Or suspected. Here... it's not flawless.

But it is fun, and fast, and feelgood, and the two main characters make a great duo.

As far as remakes go this is really not bad. It's fun to see the original with a whole new cast and setting too, and keep an eye out for the differences is in script. Undercover bits and car lessons... all good additions.

Joey Diaz is in the intro too! I didn't notice last time I watched this. probably didn't know who he was.

 rated 4/5: fo shizzle