Rating : - "You're Only As Healthy As You Feel."...
Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) is a mess. He can't sleep. His diet consists of pills and junk-food. Mostly though, Travis is lonely. He's utterly alone in the milling crowds of NYC. Travis doesn't understand how the city got this bad, this full of filth and human debris. Why has it been allowed to degenerate into such a cesspool? Why is he the only one who seems to notice or care? Why are all women the same? Why are all men such low-life trash? Why can't someone do something about it? It's up to Travis Bickle to make things right. To clean out this festering wound. Travis has a plan. He'll get the job done. Now, all he needs is a bunch of guns. TAXI DRIVER is the 1976 shocker from Martin Scorsese that scared a generation! So real is it's presentation of mental disintegration and mass murder that it has been blamed for many of society's ills. DeNiro is absolutely in the skin of Travis Bickle, bringing out subtle mannerisms and quirks that make him as complex as he is terrifying. Jodie Foster (12yo at the time) is so convincing as Iris / Easy the prostitute that she steals every scene she's in, especially in the diner. Iris is the only one Travis considers to be worth saving. She is the one pure person in an otherwise hopelessly diseased city. She is also just as lonely and in need of love as Travis himself. If he can save Iris, he can salvage some piece of himself. The other characters, such as Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), Wizard (Peter Boyle), and Sport (Harvey Keitel) are important in helping Travis to reach his breaking point. These are the people who either cause the problems or have no good answers to solve them. Betsy's rejection is a stab through his soul. Wizard's advice is useless drivel. Sport's domination of Iris is intolerable. Travis finally cracks wide open, becoming outwardly what he'd been fantasizing internally for quite a while. He'll fix it all. He'll make it right. Nothing else matters. This movie is cinematic perfection! Highest recommendation...