Just watched an old movie nobody's talking about anymore? Post it here!
'70s
I went to this in the theater, had viewed it I think twice before at home. I am not a Scorsese fan; I believe he is criminally overrated when he is counted among the greatest directors ever. This is one of the better films of his that I have viewed, though. Its main asset is the way it depicts the seedy side of NYC. The tiny theater I went to is currently an "arthouse" theater, but to my knowledge, decades ago, it was a porn theater and is at the moment the only movie theater in our downtown area. So considering porn theaters figure into this movie, that was appropriate.
The movie itself is better directed than written. Even though we hear Travis's thoughts, it feels like he takes a shift from being an okay guy to potentially murderous which is not well telegraphed. It's unclear to me why he considers killing the senator.
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Taxi Driver (1976) R
On every street in every city, there's a nobody who dreams of being a somebody.
Crime | Drama
Director: Martin Scorsese
Actors: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd
Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 81% with 11,717 votes
Runtime: 1:54
TMDB
He wants to kill Senator Palantine because he is crazy and unstable. He feels hurt by Betty’s rejection and feels like, among other things, she idolizes and cares about him in the way Travis wishes she cared about him. He just wants to kill someone because he is mad at the world and he is channeling all of his rage and frustration into that. He is not an okay guy; he is a psycho. When he is in the hotel room with the gun seller, he immediately starts pretending to shoot at random moving cars and pedestrians. The sloppiness of his inner monologue and what feels like bad writing is the bad writing of Travis, a weird lonely man angry at the world, obsessed with violence
I had thought about the Betsy rejection as being the reason.
Even though he's a nut, he is a more upstanding guy than the thieves and pimps in the movie.
I mean, he certainly sees it that way. I think it is slightly more complex though. He does murder a bunch of people at the end of the movie, purely to satisfy his own ego.
Criminally overrated is super harsh. Taxi Driver and Goodfellas are among the greatest films ever made. He's made a few clunkers and cannibalizes his own stuff but those two films are food enough to put him in the elite echelon