I saw this listed in my TV guide and didn't think much of it - but then I looked it up on IMDb to discover that John Cusack and Julianne Moore, amongst others, had cameos in it - so I watched it.I was surprised because the IMDb rating is deceptive - it's actually pretty good. A bit flawed, yes, and the lead actor (who plays a cabbie traveling the city at night) could have employed a less cheesy NYC accent, but otherwise I was entertained. The overall tone of the movie is more pessimistic than I would have imagined; the ending is bittersweet and surprising.Cusack's cameo is the best, as a secret service agent-type who is taking a ride in the cab in an effort to spy on someone. It's worth watching for his scene alone.

In Chicago we spend the day with the driving of a taxi who starts work at 6am, picking up a religious family and taking them to church. Throughout the day he has to deal with many different types of fare, from abusive boyfriends, drunken sports fans, adulterous colleagues and a woman who has been raped. He increasingly gets more and more impatient and distraught with what he sees in Chicago's life and he starts to get very tired as his shift reaches way past midnight on a freezing cold Christmas in Chicago.This film had potential – lots of characters, lots of stories, lots of real people all come and go past our main character as he drives his cab, however it is all the more annoying for the fact that it is just a badly fragmented film where little bits sort of work, some bits could have worked and other bits are just clichéd and lazily written. Too many of the characters' stories just stop and their point is lost. This is a waste because there is such a wide variety of recognisable characters here that it is a shame that nothing of any interest is done with them. Some of the stories do work and have a minor impact but they are just lost in a film that lacks structure and seems content to be a patchwork of stories and nothing else. Of course, many better films have shown us that a variety of stories with a loose connection can work as a film, but this film fails to have a real central point that we can latch onto.This point should have been the cabbie, but the film does a bad job with his character and I was never emotionally drawn into his life or his thoughts. Some of the individual stories are quite interesting but they are so truncated that they make no real impact. The cast try hard and I was impressed (surprised?) by just how many well known faces had signed up for the film. Dillon is OK but can't do much with the character – it feels like he is being given direction without understanding what his character feels. The rest of the cast are basically cameos and most of them aren't very good simply because they aren't given much to work with. Ironside, Metcalf, Reilly, Anderson, Cusack, Lennix, Moore and Hayes all show up but few of them can raise the material.Overall this was an interesting film that had potential but fails to really deliver. It is a good idea and one that requires very good delivery to hold all these stories together and deliver an emotionally satisfying film at the end – however the film fails to do that and it is annoying for that reason. It is a failure but it is not totally without merit, but having said that, I could see no reason for me to ever want to see this again.

Great movie, great well-developed characters...honest and interesting. I only wish I could write something this subtle, yet emotive. Gives the feel of a really good documentary, but then real life isn't this engaging. Amazing cast of characters...look for a cameo by John Cusack.

I thought before this started I`d be watching an inferior TAXI DRIVER clone but I was slightly surprised at what I saw . CHICAGO CAB is a dark quirky off beat plotless drama . Paul Dillon ( Doesn`t he look strange ? - And I mean that in the nicest possible way ) plays a nameless Chicago cab driver whose life revolves around driving a mixed bag of passengers from point A to point B . By no means a bad film it does have an eclectic soundtrack and held my interest . It`s just that Martin Scorsese made the definitive film on the subject more than 25 years ago and I kept expecting the protagonist to pull out a magnum and blow away a few scum suckers . This doesn`t happen