Is Taxi Driver De Niro's best film? A review

A review of Martin Scorsese's film 'Taxi Driver' starring Robert De Niro

The world has become a toilet to Travis Bickle. Out of this filth appears a flower of virtue that nothing can touch--a young gorgeous campaign-volunteer named Betsy played by Cybill Shepherd. She's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. Driving a cab at night, all Travis sees are whores; however, Betsy's incorruptible, and she alone can redeem mankind. She allows him to take her on a date. Though awkward, he says all the right things. He takes her to the theater to see a movie--a porno flick. Horrified and offended, she hails a cab and leaves him on the sidewalk. Travis is stunned. At that moment, a whore saunters by. They pause to gaze at each other--she is his mirror; they are one and the same.

Betsy destroys Travis; she's just like all the others. Now, there's nothing in the world worth saving--now, he knows what he must do. He hones his body and his mind: no more smoking; no more drinking; no more bad food--he must be fit. He'll annihilate Betsy and the whole world. By chance, he stumbles into the middle of a pimp/whore squabble; the whore is a thirteen-year-old girl. Something rises up in Travis's heart, something he never felt before. He discovers something worth saving-- a lost thirteen-year-old whore named Iris (Jodie Foster).

Taxi Driver was the second collaboration between Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese. Bernard Herman's magical score wafts over every scene. Taxi Driver was an omen, forecasting the senseless tragedies of both Columbine and Virginia Tech. No movie collection is adequate without this great film. 

Taxi Driver: a perspective

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.