100 Film: Taxi Driver 1976 Dir: Martin Scorcese
Taxi Driver Is a 1976 film directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Robert De Niro and written by Paul Schrader.
The movie is set in early post–Vietnam Era New York City and stars Robert DeNiro and features Jodie Foster and Cybil Shepherd
Plot
Travis Bickle (De Niro), who claims to be an honourably discharged marine – it is implied that he is a Vietnam Veteran – is a lonely and depressed young man of 26. His origins are unknown. He sends his parents cards, lying about his life and saying he works with the Secret Service. He settles in Manhatton where he becomes a night time taxi driver due to insomnia. Bickle spends his restless days in seedy porn theatres and works 12 or 14 hour shifts during the evening and night time hours carrying passengers.
Bickle becomes interested in “Betsy” (Cybill Shepherd) a campaign volunteer for New York Senator “Charles Palantine,” who is running for the presidential nomination and is promising dramatic social change. She is initially intrigued by Bickle and agrees to a date with him after he flirts with her over coffee and sympathizes with her own apparent loneliness. Bickle is clueless about how to treat a woman and thinks it would be a good idea to take her to a sex film. Offended, she leaves him and takes a taxi home alone. The next day he tries to reconcile with Betsy, phoning her and sending her flowers, but all of his attempts are in vain.
Rejected and depressed, Bickle’s thoughts begin to turn violent. Disgusted by the petty street crime that he witnesses while driving through the city, he now finds a focus for his frustration and begins a program of intense physical training. He buys a number of guns from an illegal dealer and practices a menacing speech in the mirror, while pulling out a pistol that he attached to a home-made sliding action holster on his right arm. He develops an ominously intense interest in Senator Palantine’s public appearances and it seems that he somehow blames the presidential hopeful for his own failure at wooing Betsy and maybe hopes to include her boss in his growing list of targets. In an accidental warm-up, Bickle randomly walks into a robbery in a run-down grocery and shoots the robber in the face; adding to the bizarre violence, the grocery owner then proceeds to club the near-dead stickup man with a steel pole.
Alone in his apartment, Bickle postures and practices his moves in front of the mirror.
Bickle is revolted by what he considers the moral decay around him. One night while on shift, “Iris” gets in his cab, attempting to escape her pimp. Shocked by the occurrence Bickle fails to drive off and the pimp, “Sport” reaches the cab. Sport gives Bickle a crumpled twenty dollar bill, which haunts Travis with the memory of his failure to help. Later seeing Iris on the street he pays for her time, although he does not have sex with her and instead tries to convince her to leave this way of life behind. The next day, they meet for breakfast and Bickle becomes obsessed with saving this naïve child-woman who thinks hanging out with hookers, pimps and drug dealers is more “hip” than dating young boys and going to school.
Any lingering doubt in the viewer’s mind about Bickle’s sanity is obliterated when he is suddenly and shockingly shown to be sporting a crude Mohawk haircut at a public rally in which he actually attempts to assisinate Senator Palantine. He is spotted by Secret Service men and flees. Bickle returns to his apartment, then drives to where Sport is and shoots him before killing the bouncer. He then calmly tries repeatedly to fire a bullet into his own head from under his chin but all the weapons are empty so he resigns himself to resting on a convenient sofa until police arrive on the scene of mayhem and carnage.
An epilogue shows Bickle recuperating from the incident. He has received a handwritten letter from Iris’ parents who thank him for saving their daughter, and the media hails him as a hero for saving her as well.[ Bickle blithely returns to his job, where one night one of his fares happens to be Betsy. She comments about his saving of Iris and Bickle’s own media fame, yet Bickle denies being any sort of hero. He drops her off without charging her as a nod to her attempt to rekindle their all-too-brief relationship.
