Robert De Niro is one messed up "Taxi Driver"

Rating: 10/10 (11 July 2011)

There are so few films as intense and cinematically powerful, and relevant, as Martin Scorcese's 1976 hit "Taxi Driver." The film is powerful, provocative, intense, disturbing, and violent. At the center of it, is a powerful, landmark performance by Robert De Niro as a mentally disturbed ex-Vietnam vet-turned-nighttime New York City taxicab driver named Travis Bickle.
In a city of well over four million people (and counting), De Niro's Travis Bickle character is so lonely, so unable to relate to other human beings, and so isolated from the rest of society that he might as well as not even exist. He takes to driving around a cab a night in an attempt to deal with an intense bout of insomnia. He also seeks a cure for his loneliness by attempting to date the pretty Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a campaign volunteer for an aspiring presidential candidate who's running on a platform of radical social change. But his plan goes sour when he takes her to a porno theater and she refuses to speak to him afterward.
This tiny mishap pushes Bickle over the edge.
He's taken a radical dislike to what he sees as the "scum of the earth": the crime, the violence, drug distribution, decadence, sleaze, perversion, prostitution and general amorality that is causing the city to decay from the inside-out, both morally and spiritually. And it doesn't take long for him to begin to act on his violent impulses, since he now has an outlet for his rage. He embarks on an intense physical fitness regimen and eventually purchases a series of illegal firearms to aid him in his mission of ridding New York City of society's undesirables. That's why he's currently gunning for Sport (Harvey Keitel), the slick-talking pimp of teenage runaway-turned-prostitute Iris (Jodie Foster), which ultimately culminates in a bloodbath ending that truly has to be seen to believed.
"Taxi Driver" was widely acclaimed upon its release in 1976, especially after claiming the prized Palme d'Or at Cannes. But it was also heavily criticized for its controversial subject matter that included its ruminations on the violent thoughts of its mentally disturbed lead character and gore-laden climax. It is also not enough that Paul Schrader's screenplay was reportedly inspired by the private diaries of Arthur Bremer, the gunman behind the attempted assassination of George Wallace in 1972. It is also not enough that the screenplay is semi-autobiographical in more ways than one - not just because of its relation to a real-life would-be assassin, but also because the anger, rage, frustration, and isolation behind the life of screenwriter Paul Schrader also feeds into the film's pervasive anger, grittiness, paranoia, and oft-violent mind-set.
"Taxi Driver" may have reached the peak of its controversy - more like, infamy - when John Hinckley, Jr., a noted obsessive of the film, attempted to assassinate then-President Ronald Reagan in 1981, in an attempt to impress actress Jodie Foster, whom he had an obsessive romantic infatuation with. Talk about life imitating art, since in the film, Bickle makes an attempt on the life of the politician Betsy is working for (like Hinckley would try to do for Jodie Foster in just five years' time). Whether or not Bickle did this to get her attention in the film, is not totally clear.
"Taxi Driver" is my favorite picture by Martin Scorsese, who also appears in a not-so-self-serving-and-actually-pretty-effective cameo in the middle of the film as a man on the trail of his adulterous wife, whom he plans to kill when he gets the chance. After this film, I would consider Scorsese's next great pictures (in order) to be "The Last Temptation of Christ" (1988) and "Goodfellas" (1990). I would put "Raging Bull" (1980) in there somewhere but I haven't seen it yet.
10/10