Taxi Driver

Verdict

A landmark character study of alienation, urban decay, and self-mythologizing, driven by Robert De Niro’s unnervingly controlled performance and Martin Scorsese’s feverish New York atmosphere. It’s essential viewing if you’re interested in psychologically unstable protagonists, 1970s American cinema, or films that blur social critique with subjective dread.

Best for

• fans of psychologically intense character studies
• viewers interested in 1970s New Hollywood
• people drawn to urban alienation and antiheroes
• fans of morally ambiguous, unsettling dramas
• viewers studying iconic American filmmaking

Skip if

• you want a fast-moving plot
• you’re sensitive to sexual exploitation and violence involving minors
• you dislike ambiguous or deeply uncomfortable protagonists
• you prefer straightforward moral framing
• you want an uplifting or cathartic story

Overview

Taxi Driver is less a crime drama than a descent into a damaged mind. Scorsese turns New York into a sleepless pressure cooker, and the film’s power comes from the way Travis Bickle’s loneliness curdles into delusion, rage, and a fantasy of purification. It’s one of the defining portraits of alienation in American cinema.

Worth noting

What keeps it from being merely grim is the precision of the filmmaking: the neon-soaked night streets, the haunting score, the subjective camera movements, and the way every encounter feels both mundane and ominous. De Niro’s performance is iconic because it never asks for sympathy; it simply lets Travis reveal himself in fragments, making the character impossible to ignore and difficult to excuse.

Bottom line

Its reputation has also made it a magnet for misreadings, but the film is strongest when taken as a warning about isolation, misogyny, and the seductive logic of violent self-mythology. It remains essential, not because it is comfortable, but because it is so clear-eyed about the ugliness it depicts.

Top Letterboxd reviews

Muriel (5★) · 22493 likes

when he takes you to a porno movie 😍

Wesley R. Ball (5★) · 19049 likes

How to Get Laid: The Travis Bickle Method. 1. Find a girl. Any girl will do. Doesn't matter if she's already dating someone else or not. 2. Offer to take said girl out for a lunch date at a diner. Ask girl out for future date at said diner. 3. Take girl to a movie. Preferably the porn cinema. Chicks dig porn cinemas. 4. When she leaves, call her the next day. Repeat until you show up at her work… more

Andrew Boley (5★) · 17052 likes

I find it strange that this movie is so popular. I see 'bros' quoting it and they always have this next to Goodfellas and The Sopranos and Entourage in their collection of movies(as do I). I think a lot of people like it for the wrong reasons. They like the violence and the guns and DENIRO. But for me this is the quintessential art house film: ambiguous in it's meaning, a meandering story with no plot in sight, a protagonist

Megan Bitchell (5★) · 13339 likes

Killing myself in front of an underaged prostitute to drastically change the trajectory of her life

Karsten (4.5★) · 10982 likes

“You have to understand, that mohawk is SUPER ahead of its time” - my dad

Themes

urban alienation, psychological deterioration, loneliness, vigilantism, misogyny, sexual exploitation, moral decay, subjective reality

Topics

psychological drama, crime drama, urban decay, antihero, 1970s cinema, neo-noir, character study, alienation, dread, New York City