Taxi Driver

Released: February 7, 1976

Studio: Columbia

Genre: crime drama

Box Office (numbers in millions):

Domestic: 28.26 Worldwide: ?

Adjusted for Inflation:

Domestic: 114.40 Worldwide: ?

Directing: Martin Scorsese

Screenwriting: Paul Schrader

Starring: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, Albert Brooks, Peter Boyle

Review:

“An all-time classic.” ^VD and “one of Martin Scorsese’s greatest films.” ^FS He recreates “the landscape of [New York City] in a way that constitutes a truly original and terrifying Gothic canvas.” ^T95 The movie is “a profoundly troubling” ^T98 and “intelligent appraisal of the fundamental ingredients of contemporary insanity.” ^T95 Much of that is because of “De Niro’s extreme implosive performance” ^T95 which “subconsciously informs all the great actor’s subsequent performances: there is the spring, waiting to uncoil.” ^T98

De Niro is ex-Marine Travis Bickle, “a violent, alienated, unfocused, psychotic NYC taxi driver” ^FS who works the night shift in Times Square. His “rage builds in a lonely, dark world” ^A07 “fatalistically disturbed by the squalid, hellish urban underbelly of pimps, whores, winos, and junkies.” ^FS “His one feeble attempt at social and emotional contact – a date with a blonde political campaign worker Betsy (Shepherd) fails miserably when he takes her to a porn film.” ^FS

“His fantasized one-man campaign/mission to clean up the streets focuses on saving a prepubescent child prostitute Iris (Foster). It ends with a failed political assassination attempt, and a rage-filled, pent-up blood-bath massacre, including the killing of Iris’ pimp ‘Sport’ (Harvey Keitel). In the aftermath, the repellent character emerges as a vindicated, folk savior-hero.” ^FS

“One of film’s most iconic lines wasn't written by screenwriter Paul Schrader. Rather, Robert De Niro improvised, taking it from rocker Bruce Springsteen whom he’d seen in concert with Martin Scorsese in New York. Springsteen responded to the audience calling his name for an encore by asking: ‘You talkin’ to me?" ^MSN