As relevant today as it was 30 years ago

Rating: Null/10 (29 August 2005)

Comments written in 2005 on Taxi Driver will doubtless take into consideration things like De Niro winning an Oscar four years later with "Raging Bull", Scorsese still haven't had any luck with Oscar (he wasn't even nominated for Taxi Driver), Foster's rose to stardom, etc, etc. And yet, as one critic puts it, even today, the only thing about Taxi Driver that is out-of-date is the fashion.
My immediate association of Travis Bickle (the New York taxi driver immortalized by De Niro) is with Paul Kersey, played by Charles Bronson in "Death Wish" (1974). But then, these two are in fact very different types of vigilante. Kersey's action is driven by a personal tragedy and it's very clear in his mind what he is doing. Bickle, as one critic puts it, is "certifiably insane". But then, he is also clear about what he is doing, but in a different way.
I can't remember who said that the mind of a mad man is just like the mind of a child (maybe nobody said it). When Bickle, after winning a favorable reaction from his blond goddess Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), blunders by taking her to a porn movie, his apology is as sincere as a 10-year-old boy's who has accidentally broken a neighbor's window with a baseball. This one layer of Bickle's mind, this innocence, is always there, even when it is subordinated to his absolute detestation of the "scum" of New York that finally drives him to become a psychotic. So much have been said about the urban alienation, the inability to relate etc, etc, of this character. The deepest impression in my mind from De Niro's portrayal, however, is his childlike innocence.