Word: tauter
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...main problem with this play is that all three of the characters are so consistently loco that we become dulled by it. There should be a doorman or a maid or something--someone to set off the shrieking and flyings ashtrays. That, or a tauter script. After the play's rambling dialogues, its climactic scene in which Scooper leaves his blind mother talking to a wheelchair while he and Dierdre run off (to Doubleday?) leaves you cold...
...like to do?shake the System loose from its routines, pieties and general lack of responsiveness to the common needs of both keypunch operators and tough cops. One might wish that The Enforcer had the cinematic smarts imparted by Director Don Siegel to the original Dirty Harry, a tenser, tauter piece of work. But The Enforcer is fairish fun?and certainly no threat to liberal democracy. Richard Schickel
Taxi Driver, Scorsese's latest effort, is a much tauter, much more disciplined work. Without sacrificing any of the authenticity of his feel for the subject, Scorsese controls the tension of the movie; he's constantly holding something back. The violence is always there, murmuring relentlessly in the facial expressions of Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro), in the sweltering New York City streets, but Scorsese restrains it, draws us ever closer to the explosion then retreats, telling us smilingly, "No, it's not time yet." And we wait anxiously for deliverance...
Postmaster General Winton Blount could only move to lessen the strike's effects, not to end the walkout. Mail destined for affected cities was embargoed, and began piling up by the ton. Mailboxes were ordered sealed. Jailing workers or union officials, a weapon allowed by statute, promised only a tauter confrontation. A court order barring the strike was ignored by the rank and file, who courted contempt citations...