Taxi Driver

Director:
Martin Scorsese

Writer:
Paul Schrader

Cast:
Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle
Jodie Foster as Iris
Cybill Shepherd as Betsy

Released: 1976
Studio: Columbia
Box Office: $28,262,574

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%
IMDB Score: 8.6

Date Seen: September 21, 2009
Format: DVD

This was a hard movie for me to wrap my head around. Most films are made so that the watcher gets a sense of enjoyment out of it. I got no enjoyment from watching Taxi Driver. Martin Scorsese paints a bleak picture of a man consumed by loneliness.

Robert DeNiro plays Travis Bickle, a Vietnam veteran suffering from insomnia and looking for a job. He takes a job as a cabbie working the night shift. He travels through the city, going to places and picking up customers that the other cab drivers won’t. There are several shots of Bickle driving his taxi around the city past the pimps and prostitutes and drug dealers. His fellow drivers think that he needs some protection, so he buys several handguns that he starts to keep on him. He meets Betsy, a campaign worker for a senatorial candidiate, but after he takes her to a dirty movie on their first date, she rebukes him and this sets him off. He goes into a manic state and determines that he is going to kill the politician. I’m not going to give anymore of the plot away, but Bickle is the loneliest character I have ever seen in a motion picture. Everytime he tries to make a connection with somebody, they end up leaving him.

Scorsese’s masterful direction turns what is quite frankly a boring storyline into a suspenseful drama. I like how he develops Travis’s madness slowly over the course of the movie. It shows him alone in his apartment practicing pulling the guns out of their holsters and firing the empty guns at the TV.

I can’t deny that this is a very well made and complex film. I understand why the critics like it so well. I just didn’t enjoy it enough to recommend it to anyone else. I felt depressed when the movie was over.

Taxi Driver is listed as number 52 in AFI’s 100 Greatest Films.

Favorite Performance:
Robert DeNiro as Travis Bickle

Favorite Quote:
Travis Bickle: The days go on and on… they don’t end. All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go. I don’t believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention, I believe that one should become a person like other people.

Grade:
B+

Recommendation:
Don’t see it unless you want to watch a classic film or are in the mood to watch a depressing film.