Taxi Driver (1976) Review

“You talking to me?”

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

When the world around you is not comfortable, do something about it.


PLOT


1976’s Taxi Driver follows Vietnam war veteran Travis Bickle who lives in New York and takes a night shift for a titular position to cope with chronic insomnia. To cope with loneliness, he either goes to a porno theater or write aphorisms. With every drive, he gets so disgusted of driving around urban decay that he hopes for it to be solved with personal action. He then falls for a lady named Betsy who is a campaign worker for presidential candidate Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris); Ironcially, he met Palantine due to driving him to a meeting at night and shares his hopes for NY to be better than how it is. He does ask out Betsy for coffee and she does become interested him, but Bickle ruins his second date when taking her to a porno theater that disgusts her. His mistake causes him to go an existential crisis and confesses with his coworker nicknamed The Wizard (Peter Boyle) that he has violent thoughts. He builds a solution by buying four handguns from a dealer named Easy Andy (Steven Prince) and starts following his own physical training regimen. He even finds creativity by building a quick-draw firearm to hide in his sleeve. He first uses it on a man trying to rob his favorite convenience store. In later shifts around the city, he meets a child prostitute named Iris who was trying to get away from her pimp nicknamed Sport and sadly fails. When he sees her again, he tricks Sport into thinking he wants to solicit her, but Bickle wants to persuade her in escaping and returning to her parents, which she fearfully hesitates. The following day, he dons a Mohawk and tries to assassinate Palantine until being spotted by a Secret Service agent. After making it back home undetected, he goes back to Sport’s brothel by evening to save Iris. Bickle would have a shootout with both Sport, a bouncer and a mafioso that is a signature client. He then tries to shoot himself, but is out of bullets in the process. When the cops arrive, he is heralded as a hero for saving Iris who ends up reuniting with her parents as he recovers gunshot wounds he got in the crossfire. When recovering, Bickle gets a letter from Iris’ parents who thank him for saving her and update him that she’s back in school. After recovering, he resumes work and ends up seeing Betsy again who admits she followed his story in the newspaper; She also shares that Palantine got his official nomination. The film would end with Travis dropping off Betsy home free of charge and drives away smiling.


THOUGHTS


Martin Scorsese has been looked at as one of the greatest filmmakers alive  if not the best, and when people ask what is his best project, my answer would be this gem. I’ve grown to be attached to this one the most over the years because he and writer Paul Schrader made something that felt close to home. In a way, they give this reflection on how rock bottom society is wherever you go and the American Dream is truly how you make it if you really want it to come true. When capturing Michael Chapman’s stunning cinematography and Bernard Herrmann’s captivating score, you also start feeling the toll that can come from loneliness as it can leave to unchecked actions where the end results are questionable. Through an all timer performance from Robert De Niro, Travis Bickle is the epitome of it because coming home from Vietnam has made him so mentally unchecked lol that he is so bored he feels that he needs action. With all the colorful faces he’s encountered like Scorsese being an aggressive passenger, he thinks the solution is wiping out the area one way or another. His disconnect is so severe that he was willing to try killing Palantine because that was his nihilistic  response towards the world that failed him. Before that, he sets that up through his time with Betsy. If you’re Bickle, it’s hard to not be enamored with her because Cybil Shepherd is so beautifully angelic and he believes how idealistic she is in her line of work. He sees it as an opposites attract relationship since he doesn’t really believe in Palantine the way she does. And had he thought about she wanted to do for a date, things definitely would’ve lasted longer for them. On the bright side, she got to see how good of a man he really is when it came to his vigilantism. Was it really her at the end when some say it was a delusion? I think so because I think she’d be willing to go out of her way seeing him just to give whatever kind of a second chance she had in mind. If she ends up staying with a more timid the way Albert Brooks portrayed her coworker, Tom, I don’t think she’ll ever forget him. Moving on, it is quite impressive when people find their own path in redemption just when they almost feel like they deserve it. In this case, Travis had this dilemma and found a big solution in saving Iris. Breakout Jodie Foster honestly took my breath away in the most vulnerable role to perform, on par to what Brooke Shields would do in Pretty Baby. Half the time, Foster shows Iris to have a complicated arc because she ran away to be independent, but is stuck with Sport, whose frighteningly played by Harvey Keitel, due to not knowing what to do without him. She does take a liking to Travis because she respects someone still cares. Bickle goes out of his way not because he sees her innocence lost, but also wanted to figure out how to save himself. He then tries to kill himself because he still didn’t think there was anything else of a reason for him to be alive. Thankfully, people giving him overdue notice gave him enough reason to keep going on. While Travis’ actions are over the top, the point is across is to not hesitate changing things up when you want to find content and I hope that feeling remains intact for him. In conclusion, Taxi Driver is one of the greatest movies ever made for being so smart in how it wanted to give it’s commentary of the world around us. If you want to identify as a cinephile, see this now.