A movie that remains as relevant as it was in 1976. Maybe even more so.

Rating: 10/10 (22 December 2013)

On the cloudy, hazy streets of New York City, a single yellow beacon stands out. A lonely, insomniac, mentally unstable cab driver does his job. All while plotting to cleanse the city of "human trash." Welcome to a real-life nightmare: Taxi Driver.
With an omniscient feeling of loneliness (symbolized by a taxi) present in Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), our anti-hero protagonist has his one element that anybody who has ever experienced loneliness in their life can relate to. However, anyone who shoots up a brothel and attempts to assassinate a senator is by no means a role model. Travis Bickle (despite his one trait that an audience can relate to) is such an emotionally disturbed person that he sees very irrational actions as perfectly sane, making him a danger to himself and to other people. The phenomenal score by Bernard Herrmann (known for composing scores for Alfred Hitchcock from 1956-1964) reflects everything about Travis. His insanity, loneliness, bigotry, and instability are all represented in a way that hypnotizes the listener in a cocktail of sound.
Travis is a man that has nothing to live for in life. His infatuation with Betsy is doomed to go nowhere. He feels the need to lie to his parents (in the form of a letter) to make his life look better than the boring reality. Travis cannot discern rationally what deeds are right or wrong and, quite frankly, I doubt that he cares.
The climactic final shootout (which threatened to give this movie a X rating) is an intense scene that has not lost an ounce of power today. As a kid born in the mid-90's, I can only imagine what effect images like a man having his hand blown apart by Travis's Magnum .45 had on 1976 audiences. The scene also drives home the extent of Travis's fragile mental state.
Overall, this is a masterwork from Martin Scorsese. Possibly even THE masterwork (GoodFellas and Raging Bull create tough company) of his entire career. A disturbing wonder (more so for me as I am a high- functioning autistic) of the cinema that is telling of our society and of the human psyche. There are few classics in cinema that have withstood the test of time (in terms of multiple decades) in a way in which they have only become more relevant than when they were initially released. "Taxi Driver" is certainly one such movie.