Taxi Driver tells the story of Travis Bickle, a lonely Vietnam vet who drives a taxi at night through the dirty streets of 1970s New York City. He hates the crime and scum he sees everywhere, and his mind starts to break as he looks for a way to fix it all.https://spoilertown.com/taxi-driver-1976/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_Driver
Travis falls hard for Betsy, a sweet woman working on a politician’s campaign. He thinks she is like an angel in the mess of the city. They go on a date, but Travis messes it up by taking her to a porn movie theater because he does not get how normal people act. Betsy runs off, and this crushes him even more.https://spoilertown.com/taxi-driver-1976/
After that, Travis gets darker. He writes angry words in his diary about cleaning up the filth. He works out hard, buys illegal guns, and practices tough talk in his mirror with the famous line, “You talkin’ to me?” His big plan is to shoot Senator Palantine, the politician Betsy works for, but guards stop him.https://spoilertown.com/taxi-driver-1976/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_Driver
Instead, he heads to a brothel where a young girl named Iris works as a prostitute under a bad guy named Sport. Travis bursts in, shoots Sport and a couple other men in a wild gunfight. He gets shot too and tries to kill himself with his finger like a gun, but he lives.https://spoilertown.com/taxi-driver-1976/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_Driver
The ending confuses everyone. Papers call Travis a hero for saving Iris. Her parents send a thank-you letter, and she goes back to school. He wakes up from a coma, gets out of the hospital, and goes back to driving his cab. One day Betsy gets in his taxi. She acts nice now, like she admires him, and he drops her off without taking her money. But as he drives away, his eyes twitch in the mirror, hinting the rage might still be there.https://spoilertown.com/taxi-driver-1976/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_Driver
People argue a lot about what it means. Is it real, or is it all in Travis’s head as he dies? The news clips and Betsy scene feel dreamy, like a fantasy where he gets praise instead of hate. Director Martin Scorsese and writer Paul Schrader say it works on an emotional level, showing Travis’s need for forgiveness after all his hate and blood. It leaves you wondering if he really changed or if the city will push him over the edge again.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_Driver
The film never makes Travis a good guy. It just shows a broken man lost in a sick city, chasing some kind of purpose through violence.https://blackboxhorror.substack.com/p/horror-highlights-from-my-december
Sources
https://spoilertown.com/taxi-driver-1976/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_Driver
https://letterboxd.com/film/taxi-driver/
https://blackboxhorror.substack.com/p/horror-highlights-from-my-december
