“Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads…here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up. Here is…”

The Sun‘s Simon Boyle is reporting that Robert De Niro will reprise Travis Bickle in a currently lensing Uber ad campaign. De Niro will be riffing on the Bickle thing (“You talkin’ to me?”) in a series of spots being filmed in London this week. “He’s going to be Travis Bickle, saying some phrases and playing up to it,” etc.

First of all, Bickle died in that 1975 East Village shoot-out. As his soul hovered over the carnage Bickle dreamt that blowing away three guys (Harvey Keitel‘s “Sport,” that gray-haired asshole in the brown suit, that creepy-looking detective with the white shoes) had not only restored his life and made him into a hero (bullshit) but also persuaded Cybill Shepherd to find him attractive, but he’s dead so fucking forget it.

Secondly, even if Bickle had lived it would be meaningless to show him driving an Uber at 80 years of age. Complete bullshit.

However, if the Uber ads use the young Bickle of the mid ’70s…then we’d have something. Then all would be cool.

Phillip Noyce‘s Fast Charlie will have its big debut at the Mill Valley Film Festival debut on Saturday, 10.7. Screening invites and links have been received.

I became a fan after catching it at a buyer’s screening during last May’s Cannes Film Festival.

It’s half of a laid-back, settled-down relationship drama between Pierce Brosnan‘s Charlie, a civilized, soft-drawl hitman who loves fine cooking, and Morena Baccarin‘s Marcie, a taxidermist with a world-weary, Thelma Ritter-ish attitude about things. And half of a blam-blam action thriller.

There’s a suspense scene involving a hotel laundry chute that I’m especially taken with.

A trailer will hit in a month, or just after the MVFF debut.

Fleetly performed by Brosnan, Baccarin, Gbenga Akinnagbe and the late James Caan in his final performance, Fast Charlie is….ready?…a mature, unpretentious, character-driven, action-punctuated story of cunning and desire (not just romantic but epicurean) on the Mississippi bayou. Four adjectives plus gourmet servings.

The Brosnan-Baccarin thing reminds me of Robert Forster and Pam Grier in Jackie Brown. Sprinkled with a little Elmore Leonard dressing. One of those smooth older guy + middle-aged woman ease-and-compatibility deals.

Richard Wenk‘s screenplay, adapted from Victor Gischler‘s “Gun Monkeys,” is complemented by cinematography by Australian lenser Warwick Thornton (director of The New Boy).

I’m sorry but every time I listen to the brief conversation between James Cagney‘s “C.R. MacNamara” (inspired by then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara?) and the painter guy, I bust out chuckling. It happens between 2:12 and 2:19.

“We had to go with Cagney because Cagney was the whole picture. He really had the rhythm, and that was very good. It was not funny, but the speed was funny…the general idea was, let’s make the fastest picture in the world…and yeah, we did not wait, for once, for the big laughs. — One Two Three director-writer Billy Wilder talking to Cameron Crowe.