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… Read more
91% ★★★★★ (3,186,373)
Taxi Driver
Where to watch: Buy
Movie · Crime · Drama · R
1976 · 1h 54m · ★ 91% (3.2M)
On every street in every city in this country, there's a nobody who dreams of being somebody. He's a lonely forgotten man desperate to prove that he's alive.
Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd
Overview
Suffering from insomnia, disturbed loner Travis Bickle takes a job as a New York City cabbie, haunting the streets nightly, growing increasingly detached from reality as he dreams of cleaning up the filthy city.
Director
Martin Scorsese
Production
Bill/Phillips Productions, Columbia Pictures
Cast
Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, Peter Boyle, Leonard Harris, Albert Brooks, Diahnne Abbott, Frank Adu, Victor Argo, Gino Ardito, Garth Avery, Harry Cohn, Cooper Cunningham, Brenda Dickson, Harry Fischler, Nat Grant, Richard Higgs, Beau Kayser, Victor Magnotta
Curator Review
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