Movie #880: Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver is a kind of noir-ish drama directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro, Cybil Shepherd, Jodie Foster, Harvey Kietel, Peter Boyle, and Albert Brooks.

The movie is a depiction of the mental unraveling of Travis Bickle (De Niro), a Viet Nam vet going through an existential crisis in New York City. He drives a cab at night and fixates on the "scum" out on the streets, hangs out in adult movie theaters, and just kind of tries to cope with his own thoughts. He meets a young woman named Betsy (Shepherd) who works for the presidential campaign of Senator Pallantine (Leonard Harris) and kind of fixates on her, and she reciprocates for a while. And then he takes her to a porn theater for their second date and she becomes disgusted and leaves.

Meanwhile, Bickle is also watching sex workers around the city, and notices one in particular, a young girl named Iris (Foster). He tries to get her to leave the life, and she's not immediately receptive. Travis buys a bunch of guns and practices quick-drawing them in the mirror, which is where we get the famous "You talkin' to me?" scene. Eventually he goes to a rally intending to shoot Pallantine, but the Secret Service makes him because he's really really obviously going to shoot someone, so he runs, gears up, and goes to rescue Iris, murdering her pimp (Kietel) and several other low-lives in the process.

He clearly intends to die during this, but survives and is hailed as a hero. Iris goes home to Pittsburgh, and Betsy makes contact again, and Travis just drives off into the night, clearly still Travis, but now apparently with an inflated sense of his own importance. 

I don't know if this is Scorsese's best work, but it's up there. It's simple, it's focused, and it manages to end with a feeling of "oh, this is going to get worse" but still feel like an ending, which is hard to achieve. De Niro was young and hungry (and skinny) during this, and he comes off as confused, angry, and just wanting something to do with his energy (that is, he hadn't settled into just playing Vito Corleone/Jimmy Conway all the time). Cybil Shepherd also turns in a great performance; she's clearly attracted to Travis at first (though wary), but when she breaks it off there's a real sense of not only disgust but disappointment.

I always forget how little Jodie Foster is really in this movie, but in the few scenes she has, you can see that she's destined for great things. It's a hard line to portrayed a child prostitute and bring out both the child and the prostitute parts of that, but she manages (and she was only 12 at the time!). 

I remember saying when we saw Joker that it so desperately wanted to be Taxi Driver when it grew up, and I stand by that now.

My Grade: A
Rewatch Value: Medium-low

Next up: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles