The story follows Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), a 26-year-old former U.S. Marine and Vietnam War veteran suffering from severe insomnia. To fill his sleepless nights, he takes a job as a taxi driver in New York City, a role that grants him an anonymous, front-row seat to what he perceives as the "scum" and moral decay of the mid-1970s metropolis.
Released in 1976, Martin Scorsese’s remains one of the most haunting and influential explorations of urban isolation ever captured on film. A landmark of the American New Wave, the film clocks in at 1 hour and 54 minutes, presenting a gritty, neo-noir psychological drama that has earned a near-universal critical rating, including an 8.2 on IMDb. A Portrait of Post-War Alienation
Travis is a "walking contradiction"—partly a man yearning for normalcy and partly a ticking time bomb of repressed rage. His attempts to connect with society are famously disastrous:
"God’s Lonely Man": A Descent into the Neon Underworld of Taxi Driver
