Taxi Driver: My Favorite

Rating: 10/10 (18 January 2014)

Taxi Driver (1976). A movie about a Viet Nam vet, who takes a job as a nighttime cab driver, and eventually loneliness makes him what to do something violent. Now I normally don't put this up for older movies but I must say SPOILERS, because I will probably be giving away major plot points. Robert De Niro plays our main protagonist, Travis Bickle. De Niro's performance as Travis is the best I've ever seen in a movie, he's able to be a very relatable person with a hint of insanity in him, to the second half of the movie being psychotic, but somehow still likable The rest of the cast did pretty good. Jodie Foster's performance as Iris was good especially considering she was only 14 at the time. I loved the way the movie was able to show nighttime New York. It made it seem very reasonable why Travis hates the scum in the city. The music in the movie, was just a glorious thing to hear, it was mostly the saxophone and it fit the way New York's atmosphere was set up really well. The way the camera moves and catches whats happening, the angles and all are another reason why this is a great one. Palentine is the fictional senator in this movie that Betsy, the girl Travis is trying to date, works for. Betsy is at first a very likable character, but as Travis starts to dislike her so does the audience, a very good feat in the movie. The part when Travis's psychology takes a turn is when he takes a passenger to watch his wife silhouette in another man's apartment. Its a very disturbing and unsettling scene in the movie, but it's also one of the most important moments, because you can tell from the way the passenger is talking about killing his wife with a 44. Magnum and how Travis reacts and looks, that the passenger had given him an idea. This is when the loneliness starts to turn to violence. After that Travis starts to build himself an arsenal. A very good scene is when Travis is buying guns from easy Andy, it's great because of the way it's all played out. Another great thing about the movie is how you slowly start to see what Travis's plan is . Until it's revealed that he's going to kill Palentine, the buildup to the assassination is extremely suspenseful, all the tension rises until, the assassination fails. Most people probably know that the climax of the movie is a shootout among Travis and pimps, and lowlifes to save Iris. It's a very violent and shocking part, for today's standards, I can only imagine what it was like in 76.
The movie overall, was downright amazing, one of the best and favorites of the movies I've seen. It's strengths lies in it's excellent performance by Robert De Niro, the amazing directing from Martin Scorsese, the incredible writing from Paul Schrader, the music, everything that's set into motion makes this movie as great as it is, and it earns a 10 out of 10, one of 10 to get this high of a rating form me.