Travis Bickle is the definitive Gotham City avenger...

Rating: 10/10 (12 January 2002)

If only bad-ass cartoon characters like Batman and Spawn could muster one-tenth of the psychotic rage Travis Bickle possesses. Bickle's cape is the Vietnam Marine jacket that he wears throughout the film. The way "Bickle" is stenciled on the back it might as well be a giant "S" or the insipid Bat logo that various actors have exhibited though a series of pointless films. The whole film unspools like a dream that a Vietnam grunt could be envisioning while dying in a rice paddy on the other side of the world. (Oh, wait, that was Jacob's Ladder...) Travis is a gratingly rascist and moralistic character and the black pimps and drag queens he regards with such contempt through his cab window could be stand-ins for the Vietcongs he couldn't quite vanquish when he had the chance. His plan to assassinate the Presidential candidate is undertaken with the same ritualistic precision of a military mission. For Bickle the war has not ended and he has simply transposed the conflict onto the streets of New York. His bipolar view of the world--people are either angels like Betsy or "scum sucking scum" like Sport--is eerily prophetic of America's current perception of world events. (You're either with us or you're with the terrorists) When Travis wishes for "a real rain that'll wash the scum off the streets" he sounds chillingly like John Ashcroft or, Dubya, or even Guiliani (who almost accomplished what Travis couldn't) It's sobering to think that an outlook as disturbed and childishly naive as Travis' could morph into the mainstream point of view.
(POSSIBLE SPOILER) Current politics aside, the little coda at the end of the film, when Travis is back at his job, a reluctant hero among his fellow cabbies--albiet with a lingering soreness in his neck --has always mystified me. Could it be that that last ride with Betsy, whom Travis merely glimpses at through the mirror, is in fact his out of body release into death as he sits amidst the bloodbath back in the hotel room? I think Scorsese strongly implies this when De Niro takes one last look at himself in the overhead mirror and suddenly his face disappears from view. Notice the musical sting right when that happens. It's utterly chilling; a depiction of death more unnerving than anything I've ever seen in another film. (Or at least on par with the flash of white leader when a man shoots himself in Mean Streets.) The film is timeless and it reflects meaningfully, like a looking glass, on each era we pass through.