Taxi Driver (1976)

"New York may have changed, but Taxi Driver is as powerful and painful as ever.  Ben Walters, Time Out
"A landmark of '70s cinema that announced to the world the arrival of director Martin Scorcese, screenwriter Paul Schrader and star Robert De Niro.  Cinebrooks' Motion Picture Guide Review
"A compelling and unsettling film...  Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality & Practice
"An utter masterwork of shifting tones and flowering angst.  Phil Villarreal, Arizona Daily Star
"One of the best and most powerful of all films.  Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
"So much of this study of evil is brilliant.  Steve Rhodes, Internet Reviews
"Without a doubt one of the best American films ever made.  Tucson Weekly

Editor's Note Martin Scorsese's intense film, a hallmark of 1970s filmmaking, graphically depicts the tragic consequences of urban alienation when a New York City taxi driver goes on a murderous rampage against the pitiable denizens inhabiting the city's underbelly. For psychotic, pistol-packing Vietnam vet Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), New York City seems like a circle of hell. Driving his cab each night through the bleak Manhattan streets, Bickle observes with fanatical loathing the sleazy lowlifes who comprise most of his fares. By day he haunts the porno theaters of 42nd Street, taking his cues from the violent vision of life portrayed in these movies. As badly as Travis wants to connect with the people around him--including Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a lovely blonde campaign worker, and Iris (Jodie Foster), a prepubescent prostitute he tries to save--his attempts are thwarted and his pent-up rage grows, turning him into a Mohawk-wearing walking time bomb. Scorcese fills Paul Schrader's screenplay with a tragic realism, brilliantly capturing the muck and grime of New York City. De Niro, playing the fragile hero, steps so deep inside his role that the results are deeply frightening. Bernard Herrmann's haunting score--which turned out to be his last--completes the urban nightmare.

	Albert Brooks
	Cybill Shephard
	Harvey Keitel
	Jodie Foster
	Leonard Harris
	Martin Scorsese
	Peter Boyle
	Robert De Niro
	Bernard Herrmann - Original Music By
	Charles Rosen - Art Director
	Martin Scorsese - Director
	Melvin Shapiro - Editor
	Michael Chapman - Cinematographer
	Paul Schrader - Writer
	Phillip M. Goldfarb, et. al. - Producer
	Tom Rolf - Editor

This brutal vision of urban decay and malaise has justifiably become one of Martin Scorsese's most celebrated films. Robert De Niro plays Travis Bickle, a cabdriver and Vietnam vet whose mind slips even further into insanity after being rejected by an attractive campaign worker (Cybill Shepherd). As he plots the assassination of her party's candidate, he finds himself trying to rescue a 13-year-old prostitute (Jodie Foster) from her vicious pimp (Harvey Keitel). Scorsese and De Niro once again team up to bring Paul Schrader's powerful script to life with this classic psychological thriller.

"You talkin' to me?"----Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), talking to himself in the mirror.

"No one's safe from the filth; we need to clean the city."----Bickle

Los Angeles Times
"...De Niro's work retains so much strength and integrity you soon forget who the man is and who he became..." 02/11/1996 p.5

Premiere
"[W]itness a gifted director assume command of the medium." 12/01/2003 p.12

Entertainment Weekly
"TAXI DRIVER may be very much of its time, but if you're listening, it's still talking to you." -- Grade: A 08/17/2007 p.57

Uncut
5 stars out of 5 -- "[A] timeless, noir-inspired study of the pathology of loneliness." 10/01/2007 p.132

Sight and Sound
"[T]his is absolutely bravura-filmmaking....[Made with] intensity and craftsmanship..." 10/01/2007 p.87

Empire
5 stars out of 5 -- "On top of Scorsese's virtuoso filmmaking, Schrader's tight-as-a-drum screenplay and De Niro's compelling commitment and shades, TAXI DRIVER thrives on its refusal to iron out its contradictions." 09/01/2007 p.157

Ultimate DVD
5 stars out of 5 -- "[I]ts continued longevity is rooted in the capturing of a very particular male loneliness and urban alienation, which frighteningly still touches a raw nerve today." 10/01/2007 p.122

Total Film
5 stars out of 5 -- "Scorsese's masterpiece of urban isolation....It's screenwriter Paul Schrader's palpable disgust that resonated (and still does) with disaffected viewers... 07/01/2011

ReelViews 10 of 10
Like Raging Bull, Taxi Driver features Robert De Niro in top form. As good as the actor has been elsewhere, these two pictures mark the apex of his superlative career...There's no doubt that Taxi Driver paints an extremely disturbing portrait -- we find ourselves understanding Travis' mindset. This is expert film making from Scorsese, cinematographer Michael Chapman, and the actors. Schrader's script, which was inspired by such diverse works as Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground and Harry Chapin's song, "Taxi," is a masterful psychological study, the depth of which can only fully be appreciated on repeat viewings...Taxi Driver's message still rings as true as ever, and the characters are as shockingly believable as in the mid-seventies. This re-release offers movie-goers another opportunity to see one of Scorsese's most influential and disturbing films on the big screen. - James Berardinelli

Reel.com 10 of 10
Violent enough to make our current arbiter of all things moral, Henry Hyde, blanch, Taxi Driver nevertheless confronts the issue of American moral decay directly, though not in a way likely to lend comfort to Congressman Hyde and his merry band of bluenoses...Twenty-three years after its initial release, Scorsese's and screenwriter Paul Schrader's portrait of urban alienation, rage, and decay has lost none of its sting, feeling as contemporary as if it was made yesterday. Michael Chapman's cinematography of rain-swept, neon-spattered New York streets lend the proceeding a hallucinatory, almost surreal air. Scorsese abandoned his practice of using contemporary popular music to pepper his soundtrack, in favor of a gorgeous jazzy score from composer great Bernard Herrmann (his last) that underlines Bickle's sense of urban dislocation. At the center of the maelstrom is De Niro's intense and moving performance as Bickle in a multi-layered tour de force that never loses Bickle's humanity even as he reveals the monster within. - Pam Grady

Chicago Sun-Times 10 of 10
Taxi Driver shouldn't be taken as a New York film; it's not about a city but about the weathers of a man's soul, and out of all New York he selects just those elements that feed and reinforce his obsessions. The man is Travis Bickle, ex-Marine, veteran of Vietnam, composer of dutiful anniversary notes to his parents, taxi driver, killer. The movie rarely strays very far from the personal, highly subjective way in which he sees the city and lets it wound him...It's a place, first of all, populated with women he cannot have: Unobtainable blondwomen who might find him attractive for a moment, who might join him for a cup of coffee, but who eventually will have to shake their heads and sigh, "Oh, Travis!" because they find him ... well, he's going crazy, but the word they use is "strange."...And then, even more cruelly, the city seems filled with men who can have these women -- men ranging from cloddish political hacks to street-corner pimps who, nevertheless, have in common the mysterious ability to approach a woman without getting everything wrong...Robert De Niro, as Travis Bickle, is as good as Brando at suggesting emotions even while veiling them from us (and in many of his close-ups, Scorsese uses almost subliminal slow motion to draw out the revelations). Cybill Shepherd, as the blond goddess, is correctly cast, for once, as a glacier slowly receding toward humanity. And there's Jodie Foster, chillingly cast as a twelve-year-old prostitute whom Travis wants to "save." Harvey Keitel, a veteran of all of Scorsese's films (he was the violent maniac in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore") is the pimp who controls her, and he's got the right kind of toughness that's all bluff...These people are seen almost in flashes, as if darkness threatens to close over them altogether. Taxi Driver is a hell, from the opening shot of a cab emerging from stygian clouds of steam to the climactic killing scene in which the camera finally looks straight down. Scorsese wanted to look away from Travis's rejection; we almost want to look away from his life. But he's there, all right, and he's suffering. - Roger Ebert