Sunday, August 10, 2014

ALL THREE INCARNATIONS OF BROOKLYN TAXI

Let's travel all the way back to the year 1998 with the film Taxi (1998) and it's sequels Taxi 2 (2000), Taxi 3 (2003) and Taxi 4 (2007).   Daniel (Played by Samy Naceri ) is a Middle Eastern-French guy (Descended from People's Democratic Republic of Algeria) who works in a pizza restaurant delivering pizzas for a living.  He finally earned enough money to purchase a race car that he converts into a taxi cab. 
He also fell in love with a Caucasian-French woman named Lily (played by Marion Cotillard).


Emilien (Played by Frédéric Diefenthal) is a disgraced police officer demoted to desk duty for wrecking too many police cars and nobody wants to work with him as a partner.  He confuses Daniel as the prime suspect in a robbery.  Daniel agrees to drive Emilien around in his race car turned taxi cab for free as a police car substitute until the robbery is solved.  Daniel ends up becoming the civilian consultant to the police and the unofficial civilian consultant police investigation partner to Emilien (The only time in the film/television series that two members of the same gender worked together).  From this point onwards, being driven around in a taxi cab instead of driving a police department assigned vehicle ends up becoming a trademark for Emilien.




Emilien's ex-girlfriend police Sergeant Petra (Played by Emma Wiklund aka Emma Sjöberg) is also his employer in the police station.  She's constantly getting in the way and always on the verge of falling back in love with Emilien.








Luc Besson wrote and produced all four instalments of the French language film series Taxi.  The four film series was so popular, that a remake was filmed with a severely different cast of characters and much more of a heterosexual approach.

Let's go back in time to the year 2004.  Future Tonight talk show host/actor Jimmy Fallon is a New York City Police Officer named Andrew "Andy" Washburn is a failure as a police officer.  Nobody wants to work as his law enforcement partner and after wrecking another police department assigned car, he lost his drivers license and is no longer allowed to be assigned a replacement police department assigned vehicle.  To make matters worse, his ex-girlfriend/supervisor Lt. Marta Robbins (Played by Jennifer Esposito) has him assigned to desk duty.
 Sadly for the New York City Police Department in general and Andy Washburn in particular, an army of sexually seductive Hispanic-Brazilian supermodels/bank robbers lead by the psychotic Ana Cristina de Oliveira and Gisele Bündchen along with Ingrid Vandebosch and Magali Amadei has been going on a crime spree and only Andy Washburn can defeat the evil maniac women bullies.
 Andy Washburn has a nasty encounter with an ex-convict/taxi cab driver with a checkered past who agrees to drive him around in return for a promise for a clean record and a promise not to arrest or convict named Isabelle 'Belle' Williams (played by rapper/actress/talk show host Queen Latifah).  She owns a taxi cab that has a race car engine and she has genius race car driving moves.  From this point onwards, Andy Washburn will fight crime with a taxi cab as his trademark crime investigation vehicle with taxi cab driving non-cop Isabelle 'Belle' Williams as a New York City Police Department consultant.






 Gisele Bundchen has been bullying poor Isabelle 'Belle' Williams and now it's time for revenge.




Flash forward to the year 2014.  Chyler Leigh has taken over Jimmy Fallon's job as a similar character named Det. Caitlyn 'Cat' Sullivan.   Jacky Ido has taken over Queen Latifah's job as a similar character named Leo Romba.  Cat Sullivan kept wrecking police department assigned vehicles and nobody wants to work with her as a police department partner plus she is demoted to desk duty.  To make matters worse, Cat Sullivan's ex-husband Gregg is one of her supervisors and he's always getting in the way (Yet Cat finds herself slowly falling for him again).  Leo Romba is an paroled ex-convict accused of a robbery crime he never committed agrees to drive Cat Sullivan around for free to help her solve the robbery crime.  Leo Romba ends up becoming an unofficial member of the police department as a civilian consultant.  Being driven around in a taxi cab instead of a police department assigned vehicle ends up becoming Cat Sullivan's trademark from this point onwards.  Gisele Bündchen is nowhere in sight...











...But Jennifer Esposito (This time renamed  Dr. Monica Pena) is still hanging around the police department.

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