This is what TAXI DRIVER is all about

Rating: Null/10 (8 April 2006)

As the movie's tag-line tells us, "On every street in every city, there's a nobody who dreams of being a somebody." Travis is a nobody trying to become a somebody. His story is the story of what becomes of a man who aspires to be a 'knight in shining armor' in modern times. He wants to do good, and wants to do things right. His dreams set him apart from others, leading to loneliness and alienation. Modern society has no role for this knight; it frustrates his efforts, while at the same time the law allows evil (i.e. Sport and his buddies) to prosper. Travis Bickle would have been perfectly in place in medieval Europe, although he wouldn't have had the smarts or the skills or the money to be a real knight, but he could have been a successful warrior. The modern era provides the technology (i.e. his guns) that allows him to achieve the RESULTS of a real knight. Technology, therefore, levels the playing field, and allows the ordinary guy to be somebody (witness the various presidential assassination attempts of the 20th century, carried out by nobodies). The ordinary guy doesn't have to do anything special to be a superman; all he needs to do is buy a gun. His attempt to assassinate Palantine is a mad effort to become somebody. He apparently decided that Palantine was part of the "scum" problem, and chose him as the representative of the evil he had determined to cleanse. Also, he transfers his bad feelings resulting from Betsy's rejection of him on to Palantine. His decision-making is akin to that of Muslim suicide bombers, whose main objective is to achieve martyrdom, without necessarily being too concerned about the futility of their action on the earthly plane.
We are told that Travis spent time in Vietnam. The fighting there would not have suited him. He needed a straightforward, face-to-face fight, and it is likely that the war in Vietnam broke him. The streets of new York offer him another chance to become a knight, fighting on his own terms. But to him,as a result of his experiences, death is now more real than life. More than a knight, he has the mentality of a kamikaze or an islamist suicide bomber. His death would be of little consequence to him, as the attempt on Palantine makes clear enough; he runs away not because he is afraid of death but because he is afraid of failure, capture and punishment.
Sir Travis's Fair Lady is split into two persons. Betsy is his fair lady, proper. But due to the class differences between them, it is difficult to contrive a situation in which she can also be the damsel in distress. So, Iris is his damsel in distress.
Travis's heart is in the right place (more or less), but he is misguided. Iris is the prisoner of her own foolishness; there is nothing to prevent her from leaving, if she really wants to. Travis didn't have the right to shoot Sport in the gut like that. Usually scriptwriters contrive situations so that the hero is always obliged to kill in self-defense. America's true spiritual foundations are legal, not moral, and so America has become the Land of Pretext where you can do anything you like to your neighbor, just so long as you can provoke him into giving you an excuse/opportunity. But Taxi Driver is written (rather clumsily) to bring ambiguity into the situation. That is why the scriptwriter has Travis shoot Sport in the gut instead of the head; he does not kill him outright (which would have made Travis an outright villain) but he lets Sport live long enough to take a shot at him, so that Travis can blast him again in "self defense". Unfortunately this movie has helped condition the American mind toward pre-emptive violence, which has found it's fruition in the attack on Iraq, with more attacks to come.
In the end, despite his mental illness, lack of intelligence, clumsiness, and naivety, Travis achieves a measure of success by his sheer guts. He has certainly cleaned scum off the streets, and the scriptwriter has seen to it that the scum have no redeeming virtues, so we are not sorry to be rid of them. Travis has also won the respect--if not the heart--of his fair lady, and has grown to the point where he no longer needs to earn her approval. We only hope that he has grown and learned from the experience. In reality, Travis would have been charged with murder for what he did. Consider also that Iris's life was probably wrecked altogether by the experience; like any modern jihadist, Travis's mind is focused too much on achieving his jihad against the street scum--on becoming somebody--and focused too little on the consequences of his actions for other people. He is a hero who has--to a large extent--behaved like a villain, but he is excused any wrongdoing, and there is plenty of hope for the future.