D (Nathanael Chadwick) is a Toronto taxi driver pressed to the edge of an economic cliff driving a taxi ruled by his Vrmr app picking up a variety of passengers in all manner of human and mental disarray. His taxi is littered with food wrappers and garbage. His in-car diet is an express pass to a cardiac ward admission. His vehicle is on its last legs with its interior and engine in critical condition.
Like much of the world he has been “downsized” from an office job and forced to drive and live an Uberish existence. A new father and a persistent landlord pressuring him to pay overdue rent he picks up two party girls one of whom pukes in his cab. In desperation he phones Nic (Adam Goldhammer) a passenger who offered him a job in a new start up that pays extremely well. All he must do is follow the instructions of a Tonomo app to pick up passengers and other things as he quickly learns. Failure to follow the instructions leads to deductions from his earnings. Tonomo takes over his life on his first night.
The passengers become increasingly strange going to strange destinations, leaving behind guns and bags the app instructs him to dump in the garbage. He is instructed to smash a passenger in the face repeatedly receiving a bonus from the app with each blow.
The last pick up of a man and lady friend descends into bizarreness if not chilling evil not solely attributable to the “pick me up” cube left by a passenger he ingests that sends him on a bizarre trip that has his air vent with the googly eyes speaking to him.
D is perhaps like Travis Bickel that we know from “Taxi Driver” or Ernest Borgnine the taxi driver in “Escape From New York” as they are all victims of circumstances.
The film enveloped in a brilliant soundtrack by Antonio Naranjo is riveting, stylistic, trippy and mystical and that is sufficient to propel the film into a weird new Canadian classic despite lacking a complex plot who cares as enjoy not being a fly on the wall but the heavy dose of surrealism and the seamy underbelly of endless and perpetual road construction in Toronto.
Watch the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FIi4zmmgoA
Written and directed by Michael Pierro. It will be available on DVD 8May2025.
RKS 2025 CANADIAN Film Rating 95/100.
A Bird's Eye View of Fashion, Food, Travel, Culture, Beverage and Curiosity 