One of the greatest movies ever made

Rating: 10/10 (1 February 2012)

Director Martin Scorsese teams up with Robert De Niro, one of the most intense actors of the time to create a masterpiece of urban alienation. Taxi Driver is one of those films that you never get tired of watching and you always find little more detail that you never noticed before.
Robert De Niro is at his best in his role of Travis Bickle, a lonely and disturbed Vietnam veteran who works as a night time taxi driver because he can't sleep at night. He drives around the streets of New York at night; most of the streets he stops are full of junkies and prostitutes which are the main elements of the world where Travis lives. The scenes when you see Travis driving his taxi is shown as if you are seeing the gritty streets of New York and the junkies through his eyes. Travis is a misunderstood guy who is seeking desperately for some kind of company because as he says 'loneliness has followed me all my life, everywhere' but at the same time he seems to not do anything to avoid his situation and it is seen when he goes with Betsy (played by Cybill Shepherd) to a porn cinema.
Travis gets obsessed with a 12 year old prostitute named Iris (played by Jodie Foster) and at the time it was shocking. Travis wanted to make a difference by convincing Iris to go back home where she should belong.
Travis later on changes his look by cutting his hair to make a Mohawk punk look, he gets on his gun holster and straps up knives with tape and one that he made by himself that puts a gun straight into his hand when he flicks his hand down. It shows in this scene that he is getting prepared to kill someone and the original plan for him was to assassinate a presidential candidate. He attempted to assassinate a presidential candidate that Betsy supported but he got caught putting his hand into his jacket that makes him look like he's getting a gun out so he ran off, later at night he went to where Iris lives and kills all the gangsters and pimps there and gets called a hero by newspapers, if he carried on with his plan to assassinate the candidate he would have been in newspapers as the assassin. The ending has many viewers wonder if the aftermath of the shootout scene is real or a dream because of the camera techniques used there after the shootout as if Travis is dead and his spirit has left his body and looking at what he has done. I believe that he didn't die and the camera technique was used to show what he had done during the shootout; the last scene to me showed that he is going to snap again just like that in the future but only next time, he won't be a hero as said in the newspapers. Scorsese has made a great ending to this film because it makes the viewer think and decide what happened after the shootout even though Scorsese himself claimed that Travis lives at the end.
The movie is enhanced by an excellent music soundtrack by the late great jazz composer Bernard Herrmann who composed the music for many classics such as Psycho and Cape Fear.
I give this film 10 out of 10 because in my honest opinion, everything about this film is absolutely brilliant. The acting, cinematography, locations, soundtrack and plot goes perfectly together and created one of the greatest movies ever made. That is obviously why Martin Scorsese later worked with Robert De Niro again in other movies that are also considered classics like Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Casino. There has never been a film quite like Taxi Driver before 1976 and looking at the films these days which includes CGI filled blockbusters like Harry Potter and Twilight that always invaded the cinemas every year, I don't think there might not be a movie quite like this again.