Directed by Martin Scorsese from a screenplay by Paul Schrader and starring Robert De Niro in one of the greatest performances of his career, Taxi Driver details the life of Travis Bickle, a Vietnam veteran in thrall to ugliness and despair he finds cruising the streets of New York in the wee small hours of the morning.
"Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets," he declares in the film's voiceover narration -- brooding balefully about urban squalor while Bernard Herrman's eerie jazz score (the last work of his long and distinguished career, which included scores for several Alfred Hitchcock films including Psycho) growls along in accompaniment. Clearly nothing good is going to come of this.
A date with Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a bright, very pretty young woman who's working for the election campaign of a local politician ends predictably after he takes her to a porno movie on 42nd street. He then becomes concerned about Iris (Jodie Foster) a teenage prostitute he encounters along his route, convinced he can "save" her from the netherworld where, to all appearances, she happily lives.
Scorsese and Schrader continually confound our expectations. For example, Iris' pimp (Harvey Keitel) is given -- particularly in a scene where he's shown dancing with her -- a somewhat sympathetic side. This leavening of the character only serves to make the situation more horrific overall especially in the film's finale -- one of the most violent ever put on the screen.