Taxi! (1931)

TAXI takes the James Cagney persona to extremes in the context of showing him as a tough guy with a fist in love with a girl (Loretta Young) who abhors violence. The love you/hate you relationship between Cagney and Young is what keeps the movie interesting as the story develops, but the stupid things that Young's character does to keep her man from killing the thug who killed her brother-in-law is too incredible to swallow.Thankfully, we have some funny and romantic moments that Cagney and Loretta Young manage to do beautifully. She looks lovely throughout and it's her sweet natured temperament that makes it hard to understand why she would be attracted to a man like Cagney in the first place. He's promising to stop his hot tempered violence in an attempt to convince her to marry him, but never manages to cool it.Despite all the loopholes in the script and many flaws, this is a tidy little melodrama, very dated in its subject matter, with Cagney stealing the spotlight all the way through. Most annoying feature of the film is the so-called comic relief of Leila Bennett whose nasal voice and flat one-liners are supposed to invoke laughter. It doesn't work.Worth a view to see early Cagney, but the motivations for Young's character are unbelievable.

Other reviewers have covered main topics like plot, cast, etc. I'd just like to comment on some incidentals I enjoyed.Cagney always uses such colorful language, as he does in this movie. When a fat man stands on Cagney's foot in an elevator (and I mean STANDS on it for several seconds) Cagney gets mad. Loretta Young tries to calm him down, and Cagney bursts out, "Over nothing?!? What do you expect me to do -- let a big hippo like that plant his clod-hoppers all over me?"Incidentally, the elevator scene showed a good lesson for all would-be hat-wearers today. Young has to remind Cagney to take his hat off in the elevator -- a necessity of etiquette then, as was taking your hat off indoors, when you got where you were going. People who wear hats today, should wear hats like people who know HOW to wear hats.Leila Bennett -- some people don't appreciate her flavor of humor, but I get a big kick out of her. She drones on and on in that adenoidal, nasal monotone, completely oblivious to whether anyone's listening or not. In fact, Cagney asks her at one point to button her lip, and Bennett just drawls, "Oh, I ain't said much," and goes on with her story. She's just droll and comical because of her personality. (In the restaurant, she says, "Well, the fish died an unnatural death. It isn't fit to eat -- even in a restaurant.")And say -- isn't Buck Gerard a nasty, low-life villain! He's abominable! On Cagney's wedding night, he says, "I bet you HAD to marry the bim" (i.e., bimbo).Little touches enliven this movie throughout -- like Cagney throwing his hat into Young's apartment when she's mad at him, to see if she'll leave it in or throw it back out. Charming incidentals add to the richness of the mosaic. (How poetical!)

"Taxi!" is a 1932 film starring James Cagney and Loretta Young, made after Cagney's big success in "Public Enemy." The '30s were a time when much of what was seen in theater and film reflected the plight of the blue-collar worker. Sophisticated drawing room comedies and rich folk were replaced by "Waiting for Lefty," "Golden Boy," "Awake and Sing" and the like.The theme of taxi companies fighting the independent cabbies was used other films, "Born Reckless" in 1937 and "Big City" in 1937 being two. In "Taxi!" Sue (Loretta Young) sees her father (Guy Kibbee) go to prison for killing a driver sent by a thug named Gerard who deliberately smashes his taxi. He dies in prison; later on, Gerard stabs the younger brother of Matt (Cagney) and kills him. Matt and Sue fall in love, despite being on opposite sides of the fence - she's against violence, he's all for it - and get married. Matt can't let go of wanting revenge against Gerard.The film is dated not only because of its theme but also the depiction of acceptable spousal abuse. However, it's notable for evoking a New York atmosphere and for the fact that Cagney speaks Yiddish at the beginning of the film. This was added to the movie when it was found out that Cagney knew Yiddish. Young is incredibly beautiful but maybe a little too classy, and Cagney does what will be a familiar role for him well. One poster here thought that Leila Bennett as Ruby was hilarious; to me she was totally annoying. Four years later, she made her last film."Taxi!" is interesting for the cast, but you'll be turned off when Matt let's Sue have it. Look for George Raft as a competitor in a dance contest.

This of course is not the classic sitcom Taxi (Tankyouveddymuch) or the Jimmy Fallon turkey-burger of 2004 but an early Warner Bros crime-romance-action-drama, the kind of sprawling but contained movie that packs a ton into a short period. James Cagney is a cabdriver on the streets of New York during the taxi wars, a real-life battle for business that led to almost as much violence and strong-arming as shown in the picture.First I have to take a moment to praise Cagney... he was a screen star in every sense of the word, and held a physicality that has never been matched since... whether fighting, dancing, or romancing, (all three of which he does in the movie) he's got a presence like no other. It becomes almost comically enjoyable in this movie to see him lose his temper and beat the living daylights out of anyone who looks at him funny. Not even Loretta Young- as his love interest and later wife- is spared the big fist.This movie was made in the years before Hollywood had such strict rules about language and implications, and not only is violence a way of life but sex is openly and repeatedly referenced. It's not perfect... Loretta Young's character of Sue crosses the line about two-thirds into the movie and goes too far in preventing her husband from becoming a murderer. (She's willing to rat him out and have him locked up for attempted murder while protecting the man who killed his brother AND her father?) My only other question about the film was why Cagney's character Nolan never told Sue that Buck Gerard was the man who set up her father and had his cab destroyed... it would seem an obvious revelation in explaining his motivations and might have made her back off just a bit in her efforts to stop him.Otherwise the movie is great... Young's monotone friend- whiny and horse-faced- is hilarious, and I'm amazed at the real New York vibe they got in a movie obviously made in Hollywood. Cagney and Young share a great chemistry, and the movie is definitely worth a look as an early-era Hollywood lost classic.