Taxi Driver's Robert De Niro
The character arc in this story goes from New York Cabbie Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro)--a socially inept, angry white male, seeking self-gratification in the form of love--hating society, to planning to kill a lying politician, to wanting to see his neighborhood “flushed down the toilet.” Then coming around full-circle to what he did as a Marine for his country and risking his life for others, in this case, the child-prostitute named Iris played by Jodie Foster.
Travis Bickle and Iris are one and the same, both flawed but at the same time redeemable. Out of all of his faults—he loves watching pornographic movies and he’s also a racist, there is something basically good about him that compels him to rescue Iris and this is what Betsy discovers when he becomes a hero for doing so. The fact that Iris’ character is a child prostitute also suggests that Travis’ faults are innocent faults because he hasn’t been exposed to anything else by which to judge the things he does or thinks as good or bad. But at the end of the film he is vindicated because he becomes aware through his experiences with Iris that he isn’t a bad guy taking the good with the bad and that as dark and filthy as the world seems there is something in it worth saving.
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