Review: Taxi Driver

       Martin Scorsese is one of the most accomplished directors in the history of Hollywood, and Taxi Driver is his masterpiece. It was robbed of the Academy Award by Rocky in 1976 because the Academy is more likely to award feel-good movies rather than the dark introspective nightmare that is Taxi Driver. The movie takes place in New York, but it's not a movie about the city, it's about the way the a man views the city and how it damages him. Like many of Scorsese's films, there really isn't any cohesive plot, it just sort of wanders from one idea to another giving us an idea of who Travis Bickle is and why he does the things he does, how the city transforms him from a just a taxi driver who writes letters to his parents on their anniversary to a killer on a rampage.

       Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) can't sleep. To make the most of this situation, he gets a job driving a taxi over the midnight shift. The city sickens Travis, he sees the whores, and the perverts on the streets around Times Square and says that one day a rain will come and wash the streets of this scum. The city tortures him with women that he can't have. The blonde beauty (Cybil Shepherd) who he spies on in her campaign office. She goes on a couple dates with him, but she eventually walks out because Travis is slowly going crazy and he doesn't know how to act around women. There's also the twelve year old prostitute (Jodie Foster) he is determined to save whether she wants to be saved or not. The scene that most powerfully conveys this is when Travis is on a pay phone being rejected by a girl. As she is rejecting him, the camera pans to the right and looks down a long, empty hallway suggesting that it is too painful to watch Travis get shot down by a woman. This contrasts with later in the film when violence is shown in slow motion to see it in greater detail. This suggests that, to Travis, or perhaps to Scorsese, being rejected by a woman is more painful than murder. Like all great nightmares, Taxi Driver doesn't reveal everything we want to know. We don't know where Travis comes from, we don't know what his specific issues are, we don't know whether his nasty scar came from his service in Vietnam. It's not a case study, but rather a depiction of a few days in this character's life where things go from bad to worse and back again.

       DeNiro is masterful in his performance, for which he was nominated for best actor. Sybil Shephard is also expertly cast, as well as her goofy coworker played by Albert Brooks who provides some much needed comic relief. Harvey Keitel also makes an appearance as Foster's long-haired pimp. It's weird to see him play this hippie type character after seeing him play the stern, all-business characters in Tarantino movies like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. The dialogue is also top-notch, especially when Travis is by himself either writing a letter or talking to himself. The film's most famous scene is Travis's "Are you talkin' to me?" speech to himself in the mirror. If Taxi Driver suffers from any flaws it would be its ending. The iconic finger-gun shot would be som much more powerful if that was the final image we saw, but the movie continues to wrap up all the loose ends, and in doing so over stays it's welcome just ever so slightly.