"One of these days a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets."

Rating: 9/10 (28 September 2019)

Taxi Driver is a movie that a lot of people have talked about and for good reason. It's a properly good film, working superbly as both a character study of Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), a mentally unstable Vietnam veteran with a plan to purge the wrongs in society, and as a testament to the rising crime rate and urban decay in New York in the '70s, the very same rising crime rate and urban decay that incenses Travis. Travis's journey is our plotline. At the film's onset he is seemingly unemployed and so, knowing the city well, goes and becomes a taxi driver. On a date with Betsy (Cybill Shepard) a pretty campaign worker with whom Travis is infatuated, she remarks that he is a "walking contradiction." And certainly this characterization is an apt one. When applying for the job Travis seems normal. A little awkward maybe, but nothing out of the ordinary. At least not too out of the ordinary. And his disaffection with high crime, prostitution, and garbage strewn about the city streets is one that many people can agree with. Even his goal of saving Iris Steensma (Jodie Foster) from her situation is a noble one. Martin Scorsese keeps the movie set in Travis's world view, a world view which never really changes. Travis's mental state and perception of reality don't so much change as they simply worsen. It's a very gradual shift so we hardly realize it's happening up until Travis makes a botched attempt to assasinate Senator Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris), the presidential candidate for whom Betsy is volunteering. After that his massacre of a brothel, his final deluded attempt to clean up the city, is only natural. If you haven't seen this movie yet, do yourself a favor and remedy that.