The film's claim to greatness is fatally marred.

Rating: 6/10 (7 December 2002)

Director Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) is a famous, if somewhat infamous, film. On the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest films of all time, Taxi Driver is listed at number 47, above The Third Man (1949), number 57; The Silence Of The Lambs (1991), number 65; and even Scorsese's much better film Goodfellas (1990), number 94. Leonard Maltin (in Leonard Maltin's 2002 Movie and Video Guide) gives the film a less than perfect review. Maltin writes, `To some, Scorsese and writer Paul Schrader's perception of hell-as a crazed taxi driver's vision of N. Y. C.-was brilliant. To us, this gory, cold-blooded story of sick man's lurid descent into violence is ugly and unredeeming' (p. 1362).
Is Taxi Driver a great film or a very bad one? The film concerns Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), an ex-Marine, and his problems in reintegrating himself into a post-Vietnam American society. Travis suffers periodically from severe migraines that may be a result of his war experiences (or his neuroses, fears, or perverse imagination-we never find out). His migraines operate on a symbolic level as well. Since Travis is in great physical condition, his sickness must be emotional or spiritual. In fact, the film implies that Travis's sickness is twofold: barely suppressed rage plus a profound despair-that sickness unto death. (And what is the source of his despair? That too, we never learn.)
We know Travis is socially challenged; we know this because Travis takes Betsy, the girl whom he idolizes (Sybill Shepherd), to a porno film on their very first date. She is supposedly a high-class, sensitive young woman whom he desperately wants to impress. Has he no common sense? Was he raised by monkeys?
It is as if there is something important lacking in him-something vital and alive that has become numbed by the war (which he never discusses or speaks about-a forbidden topic). Oh, yes, he will admit he was in the Marines, but he goes no further. He can connect with no one. He is a product of a dysfunctional society-a new antihero, a rebel without a cause, but without the charisma of the Great Dean.
The problem with the film is simply that Travis doesn't care who is the recipient of his deadly anger, his repressed violence and savagery. It's all the same to him-a presidential candidate or some low-life gangster. (Some film reviewers apparently miss or overlook the fact that Travis first means to kill Senator Charles Palantine [Leonard Harris], the politician whom Betsy works for. Only after being thwarted in this unmotivated attempt, does he decide to whack the mobsters who menace Iris Steensma (Jodie Foster), the pint-size prostitute.)
Ultimately, the film, despite its great power and marvelous acting, is a cold-blooded work of art. As in the Beatles's Eleanor Rigby, Scorsese walks from the grave, the death-in-life of an urban cesspool, and no one is saved. There is no hope, no vision, and no teleology that results from all of the frenetic activity. There is no appeal to basic humanity or to religious or moral or ethical values or beliefs. Perhaps the film's claim to greatness is fatally marred. That the flaw is in humanity itself is no great consolation.