Superb but not a masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (5 November 2012)

Taxi Driver is widely considered by film critics as one of the greatest films ever made. It is indeed an impressive work of cinematic art and a very powerful unforgettable film. However, I would say that it is not flawless and it doesn't achieve everything.
One of the major problems of this film was the lack of rationality regarding the behavior of the main character. Of course, that was the whole point of the film, but the way Scorsese did it was to make him take out a girl on a date to watch a porn film! That's ludicrous. Nobody with two working neurons would ever act in such a way. While film doesn't need and shouldn't be realistic one has to make the viewer engage in suspension of disbelief and to make a taxi driver take a girl on a date to see a porn film is more ludicrous on context than anything in the Lord of the Rings films.
Final rating: 9/10, it is superb but not a timeless masterpiece.