It brings me no pleasure to pan this film. None. Movie maker Jafar Panahi has been censored by the Irani government. In 2010, he was issued a twenty year ban for making films that showed Iran in a poor light. Iran deserves every iota of pain the international community can issue for such a decree. Freedom of speech, ideas and artistic expression are the cornerstones of human existence; it is absurd to argue your country is great one without them. Iran, you suck.
So it is with profound internal angst that I evaluate Jafar Panahi’s Taxi as a disjointed, meandering, kid-gloved mess. Jafar Panahi himself set up some cameras in a car and acts as a taxi cab driver for 80 minutes. I thought there might be some fun early on when two passangers argue over execution for minor crimes. The man, who turns out to be a thief, avers that execuction will deter criminal behavior; the teacher argues that Iran’s abysmal record on such hasn’t deterred anybody for which the man is proof. The argument might have gotten somewhere if 1) the man weren’t so dismissive of the woman’s ideas (which struck me as a cultural battleground rather than a political one) and 2) he didn’t have to hop out of the cab.
A new passenger who sells bootlegged illegal videos recognizes Panahi. What? Wait, this is a documentary, right? Oh, perfect, a drama disguised as a documentary. Um … because that’s the only way you could justify the crappy film quality?
A woman drags her bleeding husband to the hospital. He insists upon a deathbed will giving her everything because otherwise, the government favors men when it comes to inheritance. Again, there might have been some grand truth here, but the scene was poorly shot, the woman kept bobbing her husband’s head around (the ideal way to treat a headwound, I’m told) and after we discover the husband is going to be OK, the woman insists on the video “just in case,” which makes her look much more like a golddigger than a grieving would-be-widow.
By the time Jafar introduced an overacting “niece,” I was done. Some films make 80 minutes seem thrifty, some make it seem too short, and for some, eighty minutes is an eternity of waiting for something significant to happen. Brave as this film is for its open critique of government policy, Jafar Pahani’s Taxi kept the meter on the whole time for me. I’m happy that this 
man can continue to make art and lift his voice above his nation, but Iran has indeed taken from him most of the things that would make a film entertaining.
HBO made this series already – it was called “Taxicab Confessions;” this was just a show people used to watch because “The Sopranos” had ended. And believe me, it was a lot harder hitting than Jafar Panahi’s hit piece here. Maybe this point of view is controversial in Iran; here, it doesn’t get a dozen hits off Youtube. High rates of execution? Teaching propaganda to children? Heck, that’s just Texas; nobody here makes a movie about it.
I wasn’t kind to Brokeback Mountain; I was flat-out cruel to The Passion of the Christ. I see no reason to to give Jafar Panahi a pass. First and foremost, a movie has to entertain; I saw no entertainment here.
♪I drove along the avenue
I tried to make a statement true
Make a statement true
Getting folks to voice aloud
Official writs that make them blue
Writs that make them blue
And I drove. To make film my own way
Yes, I drove. For ten to fifteen k
I’m gonna get my say♫
Not Rated, 82 Minutes
D: Jafar Panahi
W: Jafar Panahi
Genre: Political gotcha
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Amnesty International
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Drama junkies
♪ Parody inspired by “I Ran”
