This is NOT a great movie.

Rating: Null/10 (27 June 2003)

Taxi Driver is a right wing, racist wet dream that Schrader wrote just after the break up of a bad relationship, and he was looking for easy targets.
In the movie, Travis wants to save the white women from those people who, in his mind, have led them astray: he wants to save the Cybil Shepherd character from the liberal political candidates (Palantine, who gives a speech about how the masses suffer for the few) and their Jewish supporters (Albert Brooks). Travis is unable to get close to the politician to shoot him, so he transfers his loneliness into "saving" the young prostitute, (Jodie Foster) from the pimp (originally written as a black man), who, defying all case studies of runaways in real life, was somehow running away from a safe loving family back in Pittsburgh. This is not a great movie. I've never understood why it was popular, except for, I suppose, DeNiro's intensity. If this what the supposedly "free" filmmaking of the 70s was all about, you can count me as one whose glad that era is over.