Don't let this guy drive the "Cash Cab"

Rating: Null/10 (16 April 2013)

Taxi Driver is Martin Scorsese's harrowing portrait of an introverted man so lost in his own purgatory that he seeks a method of escape to radical extremes. There have been little films quite like Taxi Driver and yet the issue is one so universal but difficult to illustrate. Behind the waxy façade of the yellow cabbie, Taxi Driver is quite literally the story of a killer. Like most of Scorsese's works, Taxi Driver is guiltily enticing.
The film utilizes a known Scorsese technique which would later become a hallmark for the director's later films; the technique is an insider looking out, or vice versa. In Taxi Driver, 26-year old introvert Travis Bickle is plagued with insomnia, bad hygiene and a mural of desensitizing images created by New Yorkers, after dark. New York City itself is an inferno, a feculent wasteland of scum, dirt, and trash. There are no red, white, and blue American flags here. Lady Liberty is far from the screen. Bickle's New York is virtually a labyrinthine Hell. Bickle is summed up by the amount of narration he provides and the cab fare he earns. There's empty coke cans strewn about his apartment; at one point we see him concocting his own food of bread, sugar, and whiskey. He's in a vapor lock and is pestered by this transparent issue for the duration of the film. Whether it's behind the windows of his taxi cab, through the glass frame of a political office, or even into the cumbersome television set, Travis is never immersed with other people. He's an observer who cannot tolerate the scum around him but on the contrary wishes to conform and fit in. For this very reason, Taxi Driver is a masterful depiction of an introvert's zest to fit in with an extrovert world. Bickle always weighs himself down with the self-righteous image of those extroverts around him. Never once does he consider his own life as self-sustaining, indulgent, meaningful, or normal. He's God's lonely man.
Opposite Bickle's voyage into madness are politicians and scumbags. The politicians are played by Cybill Shepherd as Bickle's dream woman Betsy, and Albert Brooks as Tom, a political adviser. Politics are something Travis can never understand, and a pivotal reason for this is its necessity for cooperation, community and teamwork. Bickle only lives in and out of his quixotic fantasies, never once actually considering his own political preference, or what Betsy and Tom strive for. Thus the politicians are the epitome of all extroverts—a social club that Travis could never possibly join. Senator Palatine, the elected official, is the personification of New York citizenship. Palatine's logo is "We ARE the people". Travis must have construed this negatively, hence his descent into pure isolation.
The other group featured here are pimps and whores in Manhattan's alphabet city, a vile block of bricked tenements that, in one upward pan shot, are bleeding from the windows in ethnic minorities and undermined citizens. The "lowest scum" as Travis describes is "Sport", a pimp who panhandles and profits off of an uncertain 12-year old girl Iris, nicknamed "Easy". The second half of the movie engages in Travis's agenda to free Iris from the clutches of the pimp business. I reconsider that he not only wants Iris out of that city block, but out of New York altogether. There's a moment where Iris scoffs at Bickle, tantalizing him for judging without seeing past the end of his own nose. It's an interesting dynamic when a 12 year old girl recognizes everything wrong with a recalcitrant 26 year old man who in his own mind, doesn't understand the rest of society. The brilliant part about Iris and Bickle's scenes is how they are both misfits, able to see each other's issues without wholly acknowledging their own. The two are both trapped in impossible love stories: Iris in the hands of an unscrupulous pimp while Travis is crestfallen over the rejection from Palatine-supporter, Betsy.
Taxi Driver is such an earnest approach to the dehumanizing of a man that it might frighten some audiences. It all depends on the viewpoint of the viewer. If you're anything like Palatine or Betsy, you'll surely laugh at how crazy and incorrigible Bickle is. But for those insiders looking out, here is a fine catharsis.