Bleak, violent and uncompromising

Rating: Null/10 (15 July 2002)

Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver is not a comfortable film to sit through. It is dark, disturbing and uncompromising in its portrayal of a desperately lonely man on the verge of psychosis. The setting of Taxi Driver is New York, and as in Midnight Cowboy, it is shown as an urban city that, while superficially is bustling and teeming with humanity, is also an uninviting place of sin, corruption, crime, despair and loneliness.
Travis Bickle(Robert De Niro) lives in that city, and, at the beginning of the film, finds work as a taxi driver to escape sleepless nights. HIs work as taxi driver takes him to every part of the city, allowing him to come in contact with all sorts of people, especially the unsavory kind---e.g., pimps, prostitutes, thugs, robbers, etc. Initially, he views all the goings-on in the city and its denizens with a sort of detached cynicism and contempt, seemingly as an outside observer looking in.
However, his uneventful life takes a turn when he falls for a political campaign worker named Betsy, played by the beautiful Cybil Sherpard. There is a telling scene on their first date in a coffee house where Betsy quotes a song lyric to describe Travis as a "...a pusher and a poet, a walking contradiction", whereby Travis somewhat angrily responds,"are you saying that about me?..I ain't a pusher and I ain't never pushed..." The scene, aside from showing the naivete Travis possesses, also reveals a sort of truism of Travis' character: He IS a character full of contradictions. Here is a man who rants against the filth of the city---the prostitutes, pimps, drug dealers, etc...---and yet spends his solitary days in a porn theater (and once even tries to pick up the ticket girl). Or, that he takes the conservative Betsy to a porn movie on their first night on the town, which prompts her to run out of the theater, insulted and hurt.
Travis' descent into psychosis becomes markedly pronounced after his breakup with Betsy immediately following the porn movie incident. He becomes more withdrawn and increasingly consumed with irrational thoughts. He also hooks up with a 13 year old prostitute whom he had met earlier briefly and tries to be the self-designated guardian and savior to the street-savvy girl, trying desperately to steer her life around. (I wondered if he was doing that out of genuine compassion or because he saw a sort of young Betsy in her, corrupted but stll salvageable, unlike Betsy who is "just like the rest of them") All the while, he concocts a plan which is clearly, or at least in my mind, a desparate attempt by an unhinged mind to get back at Betsy.
The climax of the film is incredibly unsettling. All I will say is that the the scenes will uncomfortably be lodged in your mind for a few days afterwards upon viewing the film.
The performance by Robert De Niro is impeccably played and is the heart of the film. The viewer sees through his eyes, and lives and breathes through him for two hours. There is not a faltering moment in his portrayal of this complex, emotionally-charged character. And the city of New York has never been shown with such realism, its ugliness and beauty both inhabiting the same world in a sort of discordant harmony so typical of modern city. Ultimately, Taxi Driver is a psychological roller-coaster ride filled with bumps and twists, and the viewer will be emotionally drained by the end of the film. A modern cinematic achievement.