My favorite Martin Scorsese film.

Rating: Null/10 (22 June 2005)

It is an intense allegory of a lonely and disturbed taxi driver. He drives around the city doing his job and hating it. This man does not have a good life or anything close to a good motive. Whether it be from his insomnia with the painful memories of the Vietnam war or just wanting to get out of his version of hell, the streets of New York, is irrelevant. One day, he meets a child prostitute and is so disturbed by her situation that he decides to use her as an opportunity to act out in violent and unusual ways.
When I watched picture I wondered if I was supposed to feel sorry for this man. I felt like I shouldn't have, but I did. He is so disturbed and so inhuman, but in his mind he is perfectly stable and strong. I love films that challenge me like this one did. Travis Bickle is not a good person. That's one of the things that is established almost right away. He is among one of the most insane and disturbed characters I've seen in a motion picture. However, unlike other films that would paint him in a negative and stereotypical light, Scorsese has the balls to force us into his mind and force us to see the world from his eyes. We recognize what state of mind he lives in and what he feels about this world he sees. It is very unpleasant, but it is a powerful and daring thing for Scorsese to do.
There are parts in this film that seem to say that hell is the only place that Travis could exist in, no matter what. He is incapable of existing outside of this realm of decadence and self-destruction. He searches for good things in his life and grabs hold of them so tightly that he forces them to become bad things in his life to suit his situation.
Eventually, the film comes to the conclusion that he should stop searching for good things to change his life, and start searching for bad things so that other people's lives can change. The film is hard to watch at some parts, not because of it's explicit violence, but because of the emotional pain that Travis goes through.
The hardest scene to watch is a part where Travis picks up a deranged passenger played by Martin Scorsese himself. A film like this is special when it can achieve those kind of emotions from a viewer. The emotional pain is a lot harder to watch than the extreme violence that occurs in this film.
That's not to say that the violence is easy to watch because it isn't at all. It is sickeningly abrasive and nightmarish, yet strangely enchanting. The blood looks very much like red paint, with a slightly light tone to it that makes it looks somewhat pretty when splattered on the wall.. It is all the more so in that the film forces us to view this and shoves our faces in it while trying it's best to spare us from the emotional pain.
This is one of Scorsese's finest and most complete films. It is a powerful and polarizing work of art. It is among one of the most emotional and suspenseful films I can say that I've seen and it's one that you'll definitely remember!