Outstanding.except for the ending

Rating: Null/10 (2 September 2003)

Taxi Driver is one of my favorite all time movies because the theme resonated very strongly with me, loneliness. Loneliness is a rampant problem being perpetuated daily by pop culture and big business controlled mass media. Work long hours, make lots of money, get that trophy husband/wife, and God have mercy on your pathetic soul if you can't measure up to society's superficial expectations of who you should be.

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Enter Travis Bickle, a man that seems to have sort of fell through the cracks. Perhaps a little mentally unbalanced, but not an intrinsically bad person. He's in desperate need of a good friend or two, and a decent woman to be with him. I can relate to Travis a great deal, except for the racism. `Loneliness has followed me all my life. The life of loneliness pursues me wherever I go: in bars, cars, coffee shops, theaters, stores, sidewalks. There is no escape. I am God's lonely man.'
Watching Travis solitarily drive and walk through the inner city New York streets, you could almost swear there is some sort of outer force preventing him social acceptance (the hand of God, magnetic repulsion perhaps?) Always at the wrong place at the wrong time, Travis just can't win. I've been in those shoes myself, and let me tell you man, it ain't no fun.

Travis's condition could be due to a combination of things such as lack of education, improper upbringing, negative experiences in the Vietnam war, and overall bad luck. We don't really have enough info to know why Travis is the way he is. All we know for sure is that Travis has been pushed around and screwed over for long time. This is what leads him to say `Listen up you screwheads: . Here is a man . who wouldn't take it anymore'.

My only beef with this movie is in the ending. In my opinion, it should have ended when the cops came into the apartment building and saw Travis going `Pgghew! Pgghew!'. When I first saw `Taxi Driver', I thought all of the subsequent scenes were part of a dream sequence. It wasn't until I later read the script that I knew otherwise. Somehow, Travis does not get charged with murder. I can understand why Iris's parents would think he is a hero, but the fact remains that he still killed three people. The last scene in which Travis picks up Betsy in the cab also appears out of place. It seems almost as if Schrader and Scorcese had to soften the ending as to not scare away some top studio brass for funding this project. In any event, `Taxi Driver' does make a powerful statement about the dangers of loneliness, and should be remembered as one of the greatest movies ever made.