The only flaw is the "epilogue".

Rating: 9/10 (20 April 1999)

Scorcese must have known his Dostoyevsky well, and not strictly in the positive sense. In a decision of startling audacity for the seventies, he created a modern-day Rascolnikov as an emotionally scarred Vietnam vet, plunging into greater madness at the very core of the world's rotten heart: New York City. One who develops his own agenda of redemption, and eventually becomes a near automaton set to eliminate all that he hates at any cost. De Niro, as Travis Bickle is no more a mere promising talent, but a true revelation, a paragon of male urban despair, a picture-perfect definition of a walking timebomb. His metamorphosis into a killing machine is incredibly vivid and tense, a performance that glues to the screen and transcends all boundaries, making you revel in its very depravity and rejoice in the sublimely staged climax through which De Niro almost sleepwalks, blinded by uncontrollable obsession. This is interactive cinema: the kind that takes the viewers' senses into full custody and does not release them until the very last moment. Jodie Foster, unlike Dostoyevsky's fallen saints, plays her part with bitter cynicism combined with hidden vulnerability, a far more appropriate behavior for a teenage prostitute. Bernard Hermann, the man who brought you the "Psycho" soundtrack creates an equally memorable score. Yes, "Taxi Driver" would have been an all-around 10, if not for the final three minutes. Just as "Crime and Punishment"'s tacked-on epilogue of dubious "salvation" spoils the overall experience, so does the film's, which should have ended right at the end of that overhead crane shot of authorities and bystanders arriving on the scene of Travis' ultimate crime.