Review of Taxi Driver (1976) by Rollingstone82 — 19 Aug 2010

One of the most timeless and brilliant psychological dramas of all time.

Thrillers movies have nowadays become overly overdone, formulaic, half-baked, and worst of all, predictable. Thrillers like The Fugitive are great entertainment because although serving no purpose, it never fails to keep its audience gripped and guessing. The best psychological thriller movies are those that make fiction look real rather than fiction look...well, fictional. That type really creeps you in 3D and you don't need any special specs. It is an entertainment that works on the mind. And that is scary because it is believable and relatable as well. And the greatest film of this genre is Taxi Driver, one of my favorite films of all time.

Taxi Driver starts with Travis Bickle getting his license as a nighttime taxi driver. He claims to be an honorably discharged war veteran dealing with insomnia. During his shifts, he nastily comments on the dirty conditions of New York, namely the crimes that occur at night. He sets eyes on a beautiful woman (Cybill Shepherd) who is helping with a campaign that Senator Palpatine is running. He impresses her once but later disgusts her after taking her to an adult movie. Travis then discovers a 12-year-old whore named Easy who is controlled by her pimp, Sport. Travis, having had enough with the filth he has seen happening in New York, takes up a violent mission to "save" his girlfriend and rescue Easy.

This album is not really about plot. The plot is the character itself. In other words, Taxi Driver is a character study. Here Martin Scorsese takes us into the world seen through Travis. Travis becomes our eyes and guide throughout the movie. He is the perspective that we find creepy yet pitiable. He is a lonely chump. He has no friends and can only contact his family through letters. He even lies to his parents that he is a government agent who cannot disclose his address to anyone as it would affect his secrecy. Why? He doesn't want his parents to find out about his poor-paying job and miserable life. And he himself isn't too nice. Often he looks with cold stares at blacks showing a racist attitude.

Yet his character is the core of the film that keeps drawing us further in. He tells us that he hates what goes on in New York: the drug trafficking, murders, robberies, and prostitution. Yet despite that, at day he watches porno movies in the theater. Out of a lack of importance. He doesn't know anything worthy enough for him to do. He doesn't know what to achieve. He is not exactly a hypocrite but a person who longs for meaning in a life that seems hopeless and aimless.

He sights Cybill and is drawn to her beauty and wants to have a relationship with her. But he doesn't know the workings of society. When she leaves the porno theater in disgust, we feel appalled yet sympathetic towards Travis. There is a scene in the film where Travis is shown trying to phone Cybill and the camera slowly goes away from Travis. Scorsese did this to make the audience feel as if they did not want to bear seeing Travis' pain because we have connected so tightly with him even though it is only almost halfway into the film. And later on, Travis tries to tell Easy to quit prostitution and go back to her family. While to us, Easy seems disinterested and quite content with her life with Sport, Travis insists because he has nothing better to do. He just wants to make his life worth something by doing a good deed. Similarly, when he talks with a secret service agent and Palpatine, he takes it as a regular conversation whereas we and the other characters smell something wrong. That is the mystery of his character that keeps us gripped, wanting to find out more. I won't say further. I have already given too much. Please, if you haven't, go see this film.