Taxi Driver follows Travis Bickle, a disturbed and isolated Vietnam War veteran who takes a night-shift taxi job in a decaying, crime-ridden New York City. As his mental state deteriorates, he becomes fixated on saving a young prostitute and assassinating a presidential candidate, believing himself to be a righteous savior. Directed by Martin Scorsese and featuring a career-defining performance by Robert De Niro, the film is a haunting portrait of urban alienation and vigilante violence.
Schrader's Travis Bickle is the genre's high-water mark. The film never validates him and never dismisses him. The anti-hero is the diagnosis the city refused.
Schrader's script gives Travis Bickle a worldview and Scorsese refuses to validate it; we ride along anyway. The first modern study of a man whose performance of masculinity is the disease.
Scorsese and Schrader put the era's alienation behind the wheel — Bickle's cab is a moving indictment of a rotting city, and cinema had never let a protagonist curdle this far.
An essential entry — Taxi Driver embodies exactly what this collection is about.
