Review of Taxi Driver

Martin Scorsese's searing portrait of loneliness and violence on the mean streets of New York, is an American original. De Niro's Travis Bickle, the insomniac taxi driver of the title, is an angry, alienated Vietnam veteran who takes a job driving a taxi on the night shift... It remains one of the quintessential films of 1970s American cinema, a brooding blast of modern gothic cinema that boils over in madness and self destruction. Scorsese's uncompromising vision and vivid direction and a fierce, fearless performance by De Niro have inspired countless young filmmakers and actors in the decades since its release."
The movie I've watched the most and loved over the years for the most constantly shifting reasons. It's so emblazoned in my psyche that I really can't imagine what life would be like without it. There's just something about how Michael Chapman's burnt out cinematography captures the demonic dance of the neon city lights. How Bernard Herman's score mixes high class glamour with gritty street-level militarization. How De Niro's performance balances perfectly observed urban white boy alienation with alluringly/repulsively antisocial impusles. How the editing is both pathologically hypnotic and terrifyingly confrontational. There's something wicked, contradictory, and unhealthy about this movie, but then there's something wicked, contradictory, and unhealthy about post-industrial American society. I don't know exactly what that sick thing is, but whatever it is, it's certainly buried within this film somewhere. As far as I'm concerned everyone involved never came even remotely close to matching this achievement ever again, and that's saying something.