The best Taxi Scenes In Cinema

A taxi isn't just a way of getting from one place to another for a vastly inflated fee. It can be a place for confession, for the beginning or end of relationships, or a something to be followed in a high-speed chase.

In movies, a cab ride is very rarely uneventful. Here is a selection of the best taxi scenes in movie history.

The Fifth Element

Whether you consider Luc Besson's future-fantasy an explosion of unique imagination or big ol' mess of nonsense, it would be hard to deny the brilliance of the car chase sequence in which Bruce Willis's taxi driver first meets gibbering sprite Mila Jovovich in a gravity-free zip through the city's skyscrapers.

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Taxi Driver

An example of the director cameo being a good thing, Martin Scorsese shows up in his scuzzy classic as a wired customer spying on his philandering wife. Makes you wish he'd act more often.

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Total Recall

Really, this should be the scene in which Douglas (Arnold Schwarzenegger) first meets Buddy the annoying automated cab driver, but good luck finding that on YouTube. However, this following scene in which Douglas has ousted Buddy from his position, driving the yammering robot to self-destruction, is just as good.

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Roman Holiday

This is the turning point for William Wyler's great romance. The moment at which Gregory Peck's weathered journalist decides not to simply send Audrey Hepburn's incognito princess away, but instead accompany the 'tired and emotional' royal home. Then the two gradually fall in love. Extra points for the taxi driver for making his mark in a fleeting scene with some really big acting.

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On The Waterfront

One of the most famous speeches in cinema history, in which Terry (Marlon Brando) reflects on the different path his life could have taken if his brother hadn't persuaded him to deliberately throw a boxing match and sabotage his own career. He coulda been a contender...

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The Bourne Supremacy

There are many excellent car chases in the Bourne series, but this is a contender for the best. After Russian agent Kirill (Karl Urban) kills Jason Bourne's girlfriend, the ex CIA agent takes his chance for revenge, chasing him through the streets of Moscow.

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Breakfast At Tiffany's

Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) has always insisted that she doesn't need anyone, that she's better off alone. That changes in the film's closing scene when she realises that a life on her own is no life at all and flees her taxi to find the man she loves. And her cat.

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Pulp Fiction

In one of cinema's great taxi confessionals, Butch (Bruce Willis) tells his extremely glamorous driver how it feels to kill a man.

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The Big Lebowski

The Dude (Jeff Bridges) is having a terrible day, with all sorts of problems with kidnappings and stolen rugs, and just wants a little bit of peace in the back of a cab. Unfortunately, he's jumped in a taxi driven by a man with the world's worst attitude to customer service and a penchant for soft rock.

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Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Very rarely is the taxi an actual character. In live-action/animation hybrid Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Benny the Cab is an active participant in car chases, screaming instructions to the person driving him. Never quite made sense that he can control himself but only when there was no peril.

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Collateral

There are many great taxi scenes in Collateral, unsurprisingly given it's the story of a cab driver whose life changes completely when he picks up the wrong passenger (Tom Cruise). However, probably the most riveting isn't an action scene at all, but one in which driver Max (Jamie Foxx) and lawyer Annie (Jada Pinkett Smith) discuss life and the things that are important.

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Die Hard With A Vengeance

Forced by terrorist 'Simon' into playing a series of games in order to stop bombs detonating across Manhattan, John McClane (Bruce Willis) and Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson) have to travel 90 blocks in 30 minutes. New York traffic being what it is, they decide to take a quicker route...right through Central Park.

(Images: AllStar, Miramax)

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