Taxi Driver

All the animals come out at night — and one of them is a NY cabbie about to snap. In Martin Scorsese’s savage psychological thriller, insomniac ex-Marine Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) works the night shift, driving his cab through the open sewer that is mid-1970s Manhattan, wishing for a “real rain” to come along and wash the criminals off the neon-lit streets. A chronic loner with a penchant for paranoia, Travis cannot connect with anyone, not even with such other cabbies as blowhard Wizard (Peter Boyle). He becomes infatuated with presidential campaign worker Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), who agrees to a date and then spurns Travis when he cluelessly takes her to a porno movie. After an encounter with a malevolent fare (played by Scorsese), the increasingly unraveled Travis begins to condition himself for his imagined destiny, a mission that mutates from assassinating presidential candidate Charles Palatine into a plan to violently save teen streetwalker Iris (Jodie Foster) from her nasty pimp, Sport (Harvey Keitel), kicking off one of the most unsettling bloodbaths in cinema history. With a ferocious script by Paul Schrader, brilliant direction by Scorsese, and unforgettable performances from De Niro, Foster, etc., Taxi Driver, nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Picture, is one of the most provocatively unsettling films of the ‘70s. (Dir. by Martin Scorsese, 1976, USA, 114 mins., Rated R)