Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver is a film about the pathology of loneliness and isolation and the lonely melancholy of an individual alienated from his environment. Twenty-six-year-old ex-Marine and Vietnam War veteran Travis Bickle (De Niro) is a psychotic cab driver who tries to solve his insomnia by driving a Checker yellow cab on the night shift. He cruises the miserable, hellish streets of Manhattan 12 to 14 hours a day, watching the women he can't have, including the angelic presidential campaign worker Betsy (Shepherd)—who rejects him when he takes her to the hard-core sex film Karlekens språk. He tries to save a 12-year-old prostitute (Foster) from her pimp (Keitel). As he wrestles with his ever-deepening alienation and mounting hatred, he develops a goal that becomes a dangerous obsession—to help wash all the scum off the streets and make the world a better place. In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked Taxi Driver as the Number 52 Greatest Movie of All Time. (Gary Reber)