Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver is a classic cinematic masterpiece and one of Martin Scorsese’s best films of all time. This is a hard-edge, violent film that pull no punches with its compelling portrayal of a derange loner named Travis Bickle embodied by the remarkably young and talented Robert De Niro. Film critics raved over its social, political, mental, urban decay it vividly presented, and audiences were deeply drawn to it, adding to its success as film.

Roger Ebert mentions the film in his book, The Great Movies, “Scorses’s 1976 film doesn’t grow dated or over familiar. I have seen it dozen of times. Every time I see, it works. I am drawn into Travis’s underworld of alienation, loneliness, haplessness, and anger. His utter aloneness is at the center of

“All the animals come out at night“ he complains to himself. Travis suffers mental instability and insomnia, he “works the nightshift, driving his cab throughout decaying mid-‘70s New York City, wishing for a “real rain“ to wash the “scum“ off the neon-lit streets. Chronically alone, Travis cannot connect with anyone, not even with such other cabbies as blowhard Wizard (Peter Boyle). He becomes infatuated with vapid blonde presidential campaign worker Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), who agrees to a date and then spurns Travis when he cluelessly takes her to a porno movie. After an encounter with a malevolent fare (played by Scorsese), the increasingly paranoid Travis begins to condition (and arm) himself for his imagined destiny, a mission that mutates from assassinating Betsy’s candidate, Charles Palatine (Leonard Harris), to violently “saving“ teen hooker Iris (Jodie Foster) from her pimp, Sport (Harvey Keitel). Travis’ bloodbath turns him into a media hero (Fandango).

Taxi Driver is an extraordinary explicit film displaying a piece of American vigilante to the extreme. “The end sequence plays like music, not drama: It completes the story on an emotional, not a literal, level. We end not on carnage, but on redemption, which is the goal of so many of Scorses’s characters” (Ebert 455). Taxi Driver is considered to be a psychological thriller with neo-noir elements. “The film is regularly cited by critics, film directors, and audiences alike as one of the greatest films of all time”