Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: Paul Schrader
Stars: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd
Storyline
Travis Bickle is an ex-Marine and Vietnam War veteran living in New York
City. As he suffers from insomnia, he spends his time working as a taxi
driver at night, watching porn movies at seedy cinemas during the day,
or thinking about how the world, New York in particular, has
deteriorated into a cesspool. He's a loner who has strong opinions about
what is right and wrong with mankind. For him, the one bright spot in
New York humanity is Betsy, a worker on the presidential nomination
campaign of Senator Charles Palantine. He becomes obsessed with her.
After an incident with her, he believes he has to do whatever he needs
to make the world a better place in his opinion. One of his priorities
is to be the savior for Iris, a twelve-year-old runaway and prostitute
who he believes wants out of the profession and under the thumb of her
pimp and lover Matthew. Written by
Huggo
Movie Reviews
A Shattering Tale In First Person Singular
The impact that "Taxi
Driver" had in its day hasn't diminished, on the contrary, it has
acquired a relevance of Shakesperean proportions. Travis's loneliness is
a hyper representation of the same loneliness most humans have
experienced at different times in different measures. It is always
associated with a nightmare and Martin Scorsese delivers it like a
nightmare. Travis, possessed by Robert De Niro at the zenith of his
powers, cruises in his taxi enveloped in Bernard Herrman and we, well,
we're the passengers and everything looks terrifying and familiar at the
same time. Paul Schrader sensational screenplay comes to life with the
jolting force of a rude awakening. Like it happens, more often than not,
with masterpieces, it signed in a rather direct way the lives of the
ones who live it in a movie theater and the ones who made it. Scorsese
being the giant that he is, survived it and will continue startling us
I'm sure but I also bet that for years everything he did was compared to
this movie. De Niro and his "You looking at me" became such an iconic
phrase that even he himself ended up impersonating it. Jodie Foster
awoke the insane devotion of a real life would be killer and New York,
the greatest city in the world was shown with its underbelly up. A work
of art, a superlative reminder of what film could actually give us and
very rarely does.
