6070 (6070) wrote, @ 2007-05-16 14:57:00

TAXI DRIVER (1976)
TAXI DRIVER comes at a time in America when it was unsure of its direction. The Vietnam War had just ended disasterously with the country losing its first war in its history. A short while before, President Richard Nixon was forced to resign the Presidency of the United States over the Watergate scandal where he lied to America about his involvement.

People were feeling let down by the institutions of the country and didn't know who or what to trust. The upheaval of the 1960s had given way to even more uncertainty about where the country would end up. Things that people used to put their faith in were no longer as solid as Americans once hoped.

New York City cab driver and Vietnam veteran Travis Bickle constantly, almost obsessively, reflects on the ugly corruption of life around him, and becomes increasingly disturbed over his own loneliness and alienation. He hates what he sees: "Someday a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets." In nearly every phase of his life, Bickle remains a complete outsider, failing to make emotional contact with anyone. Unable to sleep night after night, Travis haunts the local pornography emporiums to find diversion, and begins desperately thinking about an escape from his depressing existence.

Only two people are allowed to touch Travis's life. One is a young woman named Betsy, a Presidential Candidate's campaign worker, who he attempts to romance. This turns horribly sour when he takes her to a porn movie on their first date.

The other person is a 12-year-old prostitute named Iris who he wishes to get off the streets. His inability to connect to others drives him to the brink of madness. Why does he attempt to kill the Presidential Candidate who is promising to make the country better? That failure causes Travis to go after her pimp in one of the bloodiest film finales ever seen up to that point.

The film is narrated by Travis, clearly a parnoid, delusional, borderline psychotic. He is as "unreliable" a narrator as possible and we are forced to live in his head and see the world through his eyes. In the '70s, many films featured characters you wouldn't think of Tom Cruise sort of heroes who are obviously who you are supposed to root for. Given the fact that Travis is so clearly quite disturbed, you may want to reflect on the incredible irony of the film's ending. What was the point for the film's director, Martin Scorsese to end it with Travis appearing as the hero?

TAXI DRIVER is studied by many film students for its realism, its unflinching look at life's dark underbelly, its grim dramatization of modern American loneliness and ambiguity. You may want to go to a site where all the stars talk about the experience of making this film. GO to Video section http://www.amctv.com/article?CID=2278-1--0-3-EST

angie gonzalez (Anonymous) 2007-05-17 15:46 (link)

i have seen parts of the movie before because one of my friends told me to watch it & from what i saw, i didn't really enjoy it. but once i saw everything, from the very beginning to the very end, after everything was put together, it all made sense & i actually enjoyed watching this film! those two hours of watching the film went by soo fast. i felt like i was only there for half an hour. anywho, i really enjoyed watching this film. that travis guy was toooo down! he went all crazy! in the middle of the film, he started getting all of his "shit" together. he started practicing using guns, & he had many of them too! he had his little mohawk going on and everything. he looked intimidating. he decided to go all out!! one thing i noticed in the film was that people kept on repeating themselves. like that travis guy. he'd say something in the background & then he would repeat it, but the second time, much slower. & then when he's in the taxi car with some guy & the guy was telling him "look up there, at the window, thats my wife" he would say something, then repeat it again at least 3 times. it's almost as if they were unsure of themselves; unsure of what they were doing. they all seem obsessive. one thing i liked about the film was the soundtrack, even though it was one song you heard in about every scene of the movie. it sounded like jazz, an instrumental maybe. it went with every scene in the film. it went with the suspense scenes, the heroic scenes, the scary scenes; it went with it all. i think that song was a great choice for this film. i think that the director decided to end the film as travis being a hero just to show how a bad guy can be good. he tried to get iris out of that lifestyle and he did. although he might've seemed to look mean and all evil, he did have his "good" side to him. (Reply to this) (Thread)

Robyann Jumaoas (Anonymous) 2007-05-17 20:09 (link)

This movie confused me a lot. Before watching this film, I went on the internet to get a summary of the movie. Let's just say that the summary didn't tell as much as the movie did. Once I heard that famous De Niro line "You talkin' to me?" I was like, Oh, so that line is from THIS movie. I never knew where that line came from. This movie was okay. My dad watched this movie but he couldn’t really remember what it was about because it was a long time ago. However, he DID remember that De Niro line! Haha. I just got confused about a lot of stuff in the movie. A lot of things kept making me ask, Why? Anyways, I questioned many things about the movie. Like, why did he watch porn late at night? And especially, why did he take Betsy to that porn theatre on their first date? Does he have no common sense? What did the Vietnam War do to him?!?! Well, anyways, another thing I was wondering about is why he bought all those guns. Knowing that he does have trouble sleeping at night, you'd think he bought all those guns because he was scared and insecure, but he's just a psycho. I think he attempted to shoot the Presidential Candidate, Palantine, because he probably thought he was just lying. He saw that America was already a crappy place and he thought that having another bastard President wouldn't make it any better. He probably thought that he was the same as Nixon. I don't really know. I thought it was funny how Travis Bickle ended up being the hero. I mean can a person like him really earn the title of a "hero"? hmm... It's ironic, but I love irony. Even though, Travis had questionable intentions, I think he still did it out of pure goodness. All he wanted to do was to protect Iris/Easy. He was stunned to find out what her age was and also after seeing her "stoned" and was forced to remain with Sport, Travis already seemed concerned. So, he really was trying to be a hero. I think the director made Travis a hero in the end to emphasize on how bad our country was back then. Knowing that Travis is indeed disturbed and crazy, him ending up being the hero is just ridiculous, right? This could also be a parody of Nixon being our former president at the time and him resigning because of him denying he had anything to do with that water supply thing. Also, I think it’s also emphasizing on the advice to trust no one. When Travis became a hero, I don’t think anyone who read the papers actually knew who he was and what he’s all about. The dirty secrets someone keeps hidden from everyone is the reason why we can’t trust nobody, but since it’s hidden, we become gullible and fall. (Does that make sense?) Okay to put it together in those clichés, what you see is not what you get, or don’t judge a book by its cover. I think I need to watch this movie again in order the figure out what it was all about. Since I got confused a lot, many of the things didn’t make sense to me. (Reply to this) (Thread)

Brookshield Tran (Anonymous) 2007-05-17 20:24 (link)

Overall I thought that the movie was somewhat boring and a bit confusing. Again we see the confusion of the 60’s and the 70’s being portrayed. I didn’t really see much the point of the movie because Travis kind of ended up where he started: just driving around feeling alienated and isolated, being incapable of forming a relationship with others and not being able to relate or connect with other taxi drivers. The only difference is that he is now consider a hero and he has a job. Maybe this movie is trying to tell us that life goes in a circle and that you’ll eventually end up where you started but with more knowledge. Being inside Travis’s head and seeing everything from it made the movie more difficult to understand and somewhat unreliable. I thought that it was idiotic and clueless of him to bring Betsy to a porn movie especially on their first date. But I guess he didn’t know, at least it seemed like it. he was also ignorant of about politics and the government, which was how most people were like in the 60’s…ok…I don’t know how you go from getting dump to trying to assassinate a presidential candidate to killing pimps and “gangsters” and ended up as a hero. Well I guess this movie is trying to tell us that life doesn’t make sense, the world is a confusing place and life is full of the unexpected. The reason why I thought Travis try to kill Palatine, the presidential candidate was because of Betsy, who worked for his campaign. Other than that I see no other logical reason. I think that these scenes represented how many good leaders were assassinated when they did their speech or simply when they were walking through a crowd of supporters. Nobody knows what to do and I think that Travis doesn’t even know what he is really doing or why he is doing what he is doing. He’s just tired of life (an example would be when he tried to kill himself toward the end but ran out of bullets) and wants out of this horrible and corrupted world. In a way Travis was a clever (seen when he was dealing with his guns, changing his looks, running away, etc.) and creative guy (seen when he was creating that device that pops the gun from the hidden view of his arm to his hand). He seemed to have no purpose in life, but he seemed to have a mission to complete which were apparent when he bought the guns. He almost seemed to be robotic. This movie is sort of ironic because Travis goes from the villain trying to kill the man that would or try to improve America to a hero, saving a runaway 12 year old girl from her “forced” prostitution life. He was just a guy, then he became a bad guy, and lastly he became a hero. What’s going on? I guess this is to prove a bad guy could be a good guy too (depending on how you perceive things or what source you receive the info from). And maybe that idea that things aren’t what they really seem. At first when the cops came in I thought that they were either going to shoot him dead of arrested him, but instead they made him a hero. He went from “zero to hero”. Through Travis we see that the government/America is a corrupted place full of illusions and exaggerated truth that becomes deception. Oh, and Iris represented the gullible population of America that are easily persuaded and convinced. A tiny portion of them may know the truth but are too afraid to speak up. These people need rescuing from those who knows the truth (like Travis) from the flood of deception. (Reply to this) (Thread)

evette gonzalez (Anonymous) 2007-05-17 21:12 (link)

I feel so dumb. At first I didn’t know who this was. HAHAHA! Then Cynthia was like its Robert De Niro. He was a good lookin fella. Anywhoo, I actually loved this film I was into it the whole time. This was like the Graduate, I actually paid attention the whole entire time! I really loved this film, the actions and everything. Okay I want to talk about Travis. He was very mysterious insomniac that has this certain vibe that made you want to marry Robert de niro. The part of travis was insane because he came from the war and became a taxi cab driver. But why a taxi? I think he chose a taxi so that he can get his own car and spend the gas from the cab to do personal stuff. He drove around in that taxi and sometimes wouldn’t pick anyone up even though he was on duty. His obsession with Betsy made me think he was crazy. Was he going to sleep after meeting someone who he can share his life with? I don’t get why he followed her around and stuff. By the way she was in “the last picture show”. Then his obsession with trying to save people. I think trying to save people is a trait people inherit after being in war because you have to try and save your people. He came to America and tried to save people. I also think that his insomnia came from the war. Even though the movie doesn’t touch much on the war, I know that because he still wears his jacket from the war with his jacket in the back. I also think he gets into this role playing thing because he shaved his head and thought he was a bad guy. I also think he is crazy because he got in so much trouble to save iris from the pimps. He turned psycho with the whole gun thing and stuff. He actually learned how to shoot them and taught himself how to kill people and he even made all of these things for when he goes on a killing spree. He was insane. Well I think he came out to be a hero because of the fact that he killed all of those pimps and Iris’ family was very very happy that she returned home. He was a hero because prostitution was decreasing since all of those men died. Also, he was a hero because he risked his life in order to save iris from the pimps. Yuuuuup. (Reply to this) (Thread)

MoNiiKaY ZaVaLa (Anonymous) 2007-05-17 23:15 (link)

wow. this movie had too much violence and blood. i hate gory films like these. well i think the ending is rather ironic given the fact of WHO travis killed. if he would have killed Palantine at the rally, then he would have been viewed as an insane individual, in the same way that we view people who have assassinated our past presidents. However, because travis killed Sport and his crew, then he is viewed as a hero for murdering the "scum" on the streets. Either way Travis commited murder, but because he killed a pimp and his crew, it is viewed from a different perspective. I seriously thought that Travis was dead, because HELLO he got shot in the neck and the arm...poor guy! but all his preparation came in handy, from the different guns that he concealed to the knife held down with tape. He knew what he was doing and how to handle his buisness. this guy sooo doesnt mess around! i thought it was interesting how it was foreshadowed that someone would lose three of their fingers. I remember how in the beginning Betsy told her co-worker to light a match using only two fingers, like she had seen this one guy do. I thought it was a rather odd thing to tell someone to attempt..but when the other guy got his three fingers blown off by Travis, i was like ...wow thats a connection right there. oh and the "you talkin' to me?" line...THATS WHERE ITS FROM! i have heard it refrenced in so many other movies, i knew that it had to come from somewhere! as crazy as Travis was, i thought it was really nice of him to want to save Iris aka "easy" because he was able to see that her situation was a terrible one, and a girl her age really shouldnt be living her life that way. so he did save someone, even if he couldnt save himself. i dont know why, but to me it seemed as if the characters in this film didnt like black people which was odd. the guy in the back of the taxi was saying how he was going to "blow that niggers face off" because he was with his ex wife and that store clerk beat the dead guy up after Travis left. im like why are you beating him up if he's already dead? everyone in this film was just so angry and upset, and i guess they just took their aggressions out on eachother. talk about major displacement. this film was okay, but i think the ending was the best, even though it was really bloody and discusting. (Reply to this) (Thread)

Luis Tamayo (Anonymous) 2007-05-18 01:08 (link)

This by far has been my most favorite film, due to the graphic violence and chaos throughout the film. When watching it I thought to myself, “finally an action-packed movie”. Don’t get me wrong it’s not just bloods and guts; it’s a deep movie that dives into what was going on at the time, in which America started to take a dark turn and drift away from the “warm and fuzzy” country we thought it was. Travis is a man who is so obsessed with what is going on around him that he feels he has to step up and take initiative. His job is metaphorical for his view on life, he is a Taxi Driver, a man who listens and watches day and night, what happens in the city. He witness good and bad, and seeks to change it. Travis probably wants to kill Senator Palantine because he felt righteous at moment, that or he was trying to “save” Betsy from working for him. Scorsese probably wanted Travis to end up being the hero to show that it’s not always happy endings. In the end Travis also seems to be reverting back to his old self, showing that all the change and revelation he experienced was merely a waste. The ending wasn’t happy and no one prevailed, it was just Travis, back to how he started in the first place. (Reply to this) (Thread)

Borath Long (Anonymous) 2007-05-18 01:21 (link)

Some parts of the movie was confusing and didn’t flow well. For instance, why did Travis went from killing a presidential candidate to killing a bunch of pimps? I mean, if he’s going to die for something, why didn’t he risk his life for something more important than over a few pimps? I understand if the prostitute was his sister or someone he loved was in the situation and then it would make sense to kill those guys. I thought he lost his life for not a good enough reason. For one thing, the girl didn’t want his help. I think one of the points in the movie is that sometimes helping others who don’t want it can lead to consequences like this. I know Travis was pist off because he felt that he had to protect the young girl from those scums. I guess he got tired of seeing all the evil around him and decided to take matters into his own hands. Another thing, I don’t know why Travis wanted to kill the presidential candidate. He did not have a good enough reason to want to kill him, unless the candidate had done something bad that only he knew about and the movie didn’t mention it or forgot to. That is another reason why the movie didn’t flow well. It could have been better if there was more clarification so that Travis would actually have reason to think up what he did instead of appearing as a unreasonable psycho. May be the movie left certain things out so the audience can have their own perspectives about Travis’s motives. Most people who come back from war are not the same and he probably lost faith in the government after they lied to him to risk his life for nothing. He probably felt that life had no meaning anymore. When he went to watch porn, he was the only one with a cold expression on his face, everyone else in the theater had an enjoyable expression on their face. He looked like he went there out of habit and didn’t even pay any attention to what he was watching. Many people who believe they have good intentions end up doing the most evil acts. Examples are Hitler and Pol Pot. Pol Pot the creator of the Khmer Rouge Regime in Cambodia until his death believed he was doing good for his people. He killed millions of my people and have the nerve to say he felt that he didn’t do anything wrong. Some people like former Khmer Rouge members see him as a hero till this day, but most civilians there who lost their loved ones cannot see any good in him. Pol Pot thought Cambodia needed a change but many didn’t support his communist ideals but he decided to take things into his own hands just like Travis, but their actions don’t mean that they are heroes. Many other people remind me of Travis from real life. Che Guevara is another one. He went to try to help a country who did not want his help in Bolivia and ended up dying there. Similar to Travis, both died and were not appreciated by those they wanted to save. The only point of this movie is that it is similar to real life in that helping those who don’t want it is a waste in my opinion. (Reply to this) (Thread)

Davis Tran (Anonymous) 2007-05-18 01:47 (link)

I thought the movie Taxi Driver was an interesting movie. Although I got confused at some part in the movie, I still like this movie better than the previous one that we had watched. The movie deals with a lot of actions and some killing scenes. I thought Travis was creative when he design and created a “quick-reference” to his gun. He strapped his invention to his arm and the gun will pop out when he jerk his arm, forcing the gun to come out. What I didn’t understand about the movie is when Travis life turned upside down. Travis love life disappeared after he took the white, blond young lady to watch porn; the young lady “rejected” him. Before Travis incident he supported the candidate that promise to make the world a better place. But after he got isolated by the white, blond young lady Travis decided to go against someone that he once supported. He tried to kill the candidate that the white, blond young lady supported, but it failed. At the end Travis became a hero because he went against a gang and survive. Travis made the street a better place by .001%. I think that Travis is the only one that attempted to make the streets a better place for everyone that is why he is crowned hero. Martin Scorsese ended the movie making Travis a hero because Scorsese probably wanted to show the audience a point. Scorsese is trying to tell us something. He’s probably telling us that all of us have our “bad” days, but we can easily make it up and be a hero just like Travis. Scorsese is also trying to show us how bad society was in the 1970’s, and the economy was weak that is why the streets were filled with “scums.” (Reply to this) (Thread)

Marthina Cinco (Anonymous) 2007-05-18 01:48 (link)

I think Travis attempted to kill the Presidential Candidate because he was afraid that he would just be another Nixon. Travis didn't want history to repeat himself. Being a veteran of the war, he saw all of the gruesome events that took place in Vietnam and thought that maybe this candidate might be a liar, like Nixon and instead of helping out the country, make it worse. If not the candidate, kill the next big man; the pimp. I think there's a relationship between the candidate and the pimp because they both have the ability to harm others and they were somehow connected to the two women that Travis interacted with. With the candidate, he could destroy the country if ever he were elected for presidency. On the other hand, the pimp takes girls and treats them like dirt, forcing them to sell themselves and their "pussies" to men. Both candidate and pimp are seen as the enemies in Travis' eyes and if he isn't able to kill one, he must kill the other. Maybe the director, Martin Scorsese wanted Travis to appear as the hero in the end to show that maybe the most "unreliable" are the ones that pull through in the end. Out of all of the people in the film, Travis might appear to be a troublemaker, especially in the sequences of him with the guns and the knife, practicing if ever he were in a situation of being attacked or threatened. It seems as though he were to start things instead of fix them. I also think that the war changed Travis in many ways. Seeing the danger caused from the war, he wanted to eliminate all harm when he came back and seeing Iris in need triggered his memory of the war and made him NEED to help her. (Reply to this) (Thread)

Patricia Silva (Anonymous) 2007-05-18 02:04 (link)

I liked this film a lot mainly because the main character is someone who you aren't sure if you should be cheering on or hoping that he will fail. I like films with antiheros because you get a close examination of how the other half of the population is instead of always seeing the person that makes mistakes accidently but later rectifies them. Travis was a really confusing character. Most of the time he seemed to be in his own little world. He also had a tendency to get obessed like with Betsy and Iris. But above all his main obession was to get rid of all of the scum in the world. To me it seemed like he considered his existance worthless and the only way he could find a purpose in his life was to do something he considered to be good. You could also tell how he was hungry for companionship but everytime he tried to get close to someone it always turned into a disaster. He probably hasn't had much human contact throughout most of his life so when the opportunity comes to change this with Betsy he ruins it becuase he doesn't know how to act around other people. I don't think Travis was the kind crazy we see in movies like "One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest" but he was out of touch with the world which could actually turn out to be more dangerous. Throughout the movie he was always capable of rationalizing and planning. Despite that fact there were times were I had no idea why he did the things he did like when he planned on killing Palatine. I thought that came out of no where because although he only started supporting him because of Betsy he also didn't seem like he held a grudge against him. Maybe he held the believe that he would become corrupt of maybe something in his mind became unhinged at that moment. I think that the point of the ending was to show how blind the world really is. Travis is the kind of guy that should be put in jail but instead he gets rewarded for killing. He did end up killing some of the scum that he hated and because the pimps were indeed scum he got praised but if he would have shot someone respected like he was going to he would have ended up in jail. The ending served to show that killing and crimes will be accepted as long as they are directed at people that are considered criminals. (Reply to this) (Thread)

Van Ardon (Anonymous) 2007-05-18 02:07 (link)

I think Travis was clearly depressed and hopeless in the love dept., he just wanted some1 to love..It showed early in the film when Betsy caught his attention, and he focused all his enery towards Betsy but when it didn't work bet. dem, he went nuts. ANd tried to kill the president, whom Betsy was part of the campaign with, but when it was all good, he was friendly to the candidate in that cab scene. TO me he was a guy that probably seen a lot in Vietnam, and had posttraumatic disorder in a way, that when he was back in the US, he was kinda out of it, didn't really see a future, just kinda wasting away, but he had plenty of anger and energy he wanted to use, and you see that in the movie in where he uses his energy. Its hard to root for him as the hero, the way it happened, i thought he would get locked up for what happend, nowadays thats probably the case, so its surprising that he didn't get locked up, i can see hw he was made to be the hero in a crazy way. Kinda took things in his own hands because probably in his mind nobody really cares,and if he doesn't do nothing about it, no one will, so he did. I think he just lost it and had enough of wat his life was coming to that he took it to the worst people that there was around him. The pimps n people dat took advantage of the innocent like Iris. maybe that was the case in the war, but he didnt' get to do it so he's making up for it. Basically i think he's just an ordinary dude, that was messed up by Vietnam, went crazy and so the world as a different place, no matter how hard he tried to stay normal, it just wouldn't work, bcuz he's damaged and seen a lot already, so he did the best he could. But for saving Iris he is a hero. I think the point the director made in the film was it doesnt have to be the good guy to be the hero all the time, it can be the crazy one too. Not cliche hero like we always see in the movies, this one was as real as his era. (Reply to this) (Thread)

Shivani Narayan (Anonymous) 2007-05-18 03:20 (link)

This is one weird movie. This movie kind of confused me a lot. At first I thought this movie was kind of boring but then towards the end I was so into this movie. The way the movie was in the beginning, I did not expect so much blood and violence. I think this is one crazy movie. The way Travis did his hair towards the end of the movie was pretty funny to me. I think it was smart of Travis, the way he utilized everything to make the gun easy to use. The war pretty much messed up his head because he sometimes seemed crazy. I wouldn’t want a Vietnam veteran carrying a gun with them because they would go all crazy on everyone and start shooting people. I totally did not expect the blood and the violence. I was like in total shock when I saw that. I knew that he would kill people but I didn’t know the director would show the scene where the guyz finger gets blown off. The thing that was kind of funny was that Travis had got injured in his neck and shot but he was still about to kill two other people. I think the point of this film ending with Travis being a hero is to show the viewers that the little things that you succeed in to make a difference in life counts a lot. The fact that Travis wanted to help Iris, was a huge thing. Out of those hundreds of guys, Travis was wanted to help her end her prostitution days. He was a hero because in a way saved Iris’s life. If Travis didn’t help her then she would still be a prostitute and she would have never been with her parents. I was surprised when Travis wanted to help her because one in a million people are willing to help a person like her. Wow I was surprised when they said that Iris is 12 years old, I couldn’t believe that she was a prostitute at such a young age. I kind of didn’t get the whole story with Betsy. She didn’t want to talk to Travis because of the whole porno issue but was that the only reason or was it something else too? (Reply to this) (Thread)

Diana Munoz (Anonymous) 2007-05-18 12:34 (link)

This movie was wierd. At first I really didn't get what was going on. He always seemed like he was lookinig for something, but he didn't know what. It was also sort of boring sometimes, when he just drove around. In my opinion it is not the type of movie that keeps you wanting to watch without even blinking because you think you might miss something good, or get lost in the meaning of the movie, but I guess that overall it was an acceptable film, but its not like I would go out and rent it to watch it just for mere entertainment. The thing I loved was the "You talkin' to me?" line. I never knew that it was a quote from this movie. Actually I never questioned the phrases's origin, but now I know, so that's cool. Travis was a crazy psycho. WTH!! He keeps getting crazier and crazier as time goes by. First, he takes Betsy to a porno. Who the hell does that?!?!?! And ont their FIRST DATE? I understand if you are confortable with that person and you have the same "interests". But...WTH! I wasn't exactly sure if he was disturbed or crazy-insane, or just lacking sleep, but from that moment on, I was like:"The ending of this movie is going to be crazy". And why did he want kill, president candidate, he wasn't even president yet, so he hadn't really done anything wrong... yet. I think that the irony of the story is that they portray him as a hero at the end. I guess that in the eyes of the people in the movie he was, but why did he have to kill all those people? He could have just killed the pimp and the guy with Iris, or EZ. Whichever one applies the most at that moment. I think, that in a way, he is a hero, but I think that the TRUE IRONY of the film was that he set out to be Iris's hero, (even though I think that his intentions were questionable.), she was his hero. She made him appreciated by everyone, and Betsy is then willing to give him another try, and she is the person that might save him from his own insanity. (Reply to this) (Thread)

Julie-Ann Dela Cruz (Anonymous) 2007-05-18 15:43 (link)

OMG! i hate this thing i wrote this long comment & i entered the code and it said error and then booom my long comment that took me about half an hour to do is gone! argh ! okay.. the movie was the best one i've seen so far since the graduate because it was more realistic than most films we've seen for this class. the events that were taking place could happen to just about anybody. travis just got out of the marines from the vietnam war and is looking for a job just to get by. he doesnt seem to be wanting to do anything with his life. he just seems to be wanting to get by. he seens to be confused and innocent like. when he finds a job as a taxi driver he becomes more and more disturbed because of what he experiences with people like for example the guy that sees his wife having an affair and wants to killl her and when iris went into his cab and the guy was taking her away and just giving the travis money not to say anything. kind of meant that the world is a bit corrupt. he always complains about the dirty streets probably meaning the dirty scandals that the president has time to cover up his dirt but not the cities. he becomes disturbed and his actions become eccentric like buying so many guns and working out hard. it was interesting when he made that machine that let the gun slide out of his sleeve. pretty awesome. he tried to take a step out of his loneliness by courting betsy but that doesnt work because he takes her to a porn flick. that just shows he doesnt really know whats out there and he's naive because he says "i see couples everytime" but any normal person would know better. so that ends and he feels more and more disturbed and he tries to kill the president thats trying to do good. i think he tries to do that because he doesnt trust him just like how nixon was saying he was doing good for the nation but he really wasnt so i guess he just lost trust and became very confused the way his emotions were expressed were pretty much the way the people felt during those time confused, disturbed, and mad they didnt know who to trust anymore. he fails to do so i guess shows how nixon got away with it and how that president will get away with it. he stumbles upon iris a few times and becomes interested in saving her because he has nothing to loose and just seems to want to do something good he tries to save iris from prostitution and offering her moeny to flee but she refuses and stays there he goes to the extremes and kills three men which by the way was the craziest scene of the movie and it was interesting seeing shooting scenes back then there so different from now a days. he accomplishes and iris is sent back to her parents. he is portrayed at the end as a hero i think because they want to show that every action count and anybody could do something about whats going on in the world. teh movie was very dark having a bit of everything bad in our society such as corruption, prostitution, etc.. the film was very real because those are the things that happen in our soceity it might seem crazy but its actually really real. i dont know. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: Julie-Ann Dela Cruz (Anonymous) 2007-05-18 17:16 (link)
	Yeah, that happened to me when I first started using this thing, so I lost all of my information. Now, I just type my comments on Microsoft Word and then copy and past the text into this message box. That way if the code is wrong, you can repaste the info you saved on Microsoft. Just a thought to save you some headaches. Borath Long (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Scott L. (Anonymous) 2007-05-18 19:45 (link)

Throughout the entire movie, I felt sorry for Travis because he was so lonely. Most of the scenes in this movie were of the streets and how corrupt the inner cities were back in the day. Travis was a simple person that followed a day-by-day routine that never changed. Everyday something would happen in the cab but to him made no difference. Travis in the middle of the movie wanted to contribute to society but did not know how to apply himself to be successful. Travis had no matters and did not know how to work with society to become a better person. Towards the end of the movie, Travis goes a little insane and started to fantasize about murderer many people with four different guns. He makes a attempt on the presidential candidate but was spotted he turns to the young prostitute and sees that this girl need to be in school and have a normal teenage life. Travis goes to the whorehouse and kills every single person except the young prostitute that he was helping. Travis is confused and instead of getting her out with no one getting hurt he acts upon his normal day where he sees actions like that everyday and thought it was right to shoot people because of their immoral behavior. Today people cannot go into a drug lord house and shoot everyone and be called a hero, it would just not fly. I can say I like the movie but was a little too sad for me to watch. That most people today are living the same life’s go through the same problems. Life in the streets and the inner city of a bad neighborhood must be a hard life. Today some kids are sheltered and do not get the social life that is necessary to be successful in today’s society. (Reply to this) (Thread)

Lily I. (Anonymous) 2007-05-18 23:27 (link)

This film was very interesting. It was weird seing Rober Deniro so young compared to today. I didn't recognize him at first. When Mr. Leibner said Robert Deniro acted in the film, I was like, "where's Robert Deniro?", and then three minutes later into the film recoginzed that he was the Travis character. I think this added to my thinking about the film being interesting. I didn't know how I should feel toward Travis. Sometimes I felt bad for him. Some times I felt like he was a crazy lunatic and other times I felt like he was just a good guy who didn't know how to handle his problems. I felt mad at him when he took Betsy to that screening of a pornographic film. If I were her, I would have done the same thing, maybe even slapped him. I don't know, it's just crazy. I didn't really get the ending of the movie. I mean, what happened to his mohawk? did his whole hair grow back? Since we, the audience, was "seeing" through the eyes of Travis, maybe he was just imagening that he was going to kill the presidential candidate and also that he had killed the men that were taking advantage of Iris. Maybe the scenes in which he had a mohawk were dreams or maybe just the ending, where he hadd all of his hair, was the part that was a dream. I think that the reason why the director of the film ended it with Travis being a hero was because he wanted to let the audience know that sometimes the strangest people could be heroic. Maybe he wanted to point out that there are also bad sides about "heroes". (Reply to this) (Thread)

Jason Dieguez (Anonymous) 2007-05-20 04:03 (link)

i thought this movie was a very intriquing movie of how realistic it looked for that time period. it's a movie where you saw through the person's eyes of how he saw things, and you had to follow what he said in order to understand it. and it took me awhile to figure out why the guy was crazy(since i didn't see the beginning) until learning that he came back from Vietnam war veteran. for a moment i thought th guy was just a person who was lonely and he was looking for something that would take him away from that label when he found Betsy. i thought there was an attempt to become more involved with his country and have a more positive outlook on life and create change for the better, but on that date he took her a to a porno movie then my opinion drastically changed on the spot that Robret Denerio's character was crazy, then goes the process of where is he and how crazy he is, buying up lots of fire arms, trying to recruit himself with the secret service, then the attempt to reach out to iris and how that was an opposite of what he was previously trying to do. Travis gave us some twists and turns that you didn't expect but you followed through with it. he makes an failed attempt to assasinate a political figure and barely gets away with it then becomes a hero when all he wanted to do was save a girl and die. it showed me that not all hero's are sane and they dont' always do the right things that we in society like to associate with "Heroes" and i think that's the message that is trying to be shown in this movie. (Reply to this) (Thread)

Rainelee Bernardino (Anonymous) 2007-05-22 00:35 (link)

-I thought this movie was pretty good. I actually had to leave class about a little more than thirty minutes early, but I rented the movie and watched it the next day. A lot of the sequences in the film confused me, but that’s what I liked about it. I like films that make me think who, what, when, where, and why questions. Plus I’m a really big fan of Robert De Niro. I think he’s a really good actor and acted brilliantly in “Taxi Driver”. Robert De Niro’s character—Travis—made me very skeptical of him. I wondered so much about why he is doing what he is doing. I kept wondering if he was crazy because obviously Travis had something psychologically wrong with him. -I think that the reason why Travis made an attempt to kill the Presidential Candidate who is promising to make the country better is because like other Americans, Travis too has been having the feeling of being let down by the institutions of the country and didn’t know who or what to trust. Especially since the past incidents have happened, like the Vietnam War catastrophe and the scandalous incident with Richard Nixon, it seems natural for its people to doubt their country’s government. I also think though, that if Travis’s plan to assassinate the Presidential Candidate succeeded, the next step in his crazy plan would be to run for President himself. -I did think the ending was ironic, that Travis turned out to be perceived as a hero. Even though Travis was psychotic and not exactly right in the mind, he was supposedly the “good guy” and the “hero” because he killed three men. I think that the point for the film’s director, Martin Scorcese to end the movie with Travis appearing as the hero, because he wanted us to see that all kinds of people can have tendencies to act upon good intentions. That’s what makes things so ironic. (Reply to this) (Thread)

monica brooke (Anonymous) 2007-05-23 17:19 (link)

this was a really good movie. robert deniro was really interesting. ifelt kinda sorry for him and his actions.vietnam really messed him up.i cant believe that he would actually have betsy watch a porno on their fist date!and then try to kill that one dude and iris.. well a 12 year old prostitiute is really sad.although the film was good,travis didnt do anything in the entire movie. he is still a taxi driver angry at the world.i think that travis is a tragic hero.the war changed him and his outlook on life (Reply to this) (Thread)

Joel Pollack (Anonymous) 2007-05-24 14:58 (link)

This film is one of the best films I have seen. I like how everything was so realistic. The problems, the people are all believable. Many times in movies there is a designated bad guy and good guy, most movies seem black and white. Movies like that provide great entertainment, however life isn’t in just black and white, it is mostly in the middle, with shades of gray and many different colors. The reason why he tries to kill the presidential candidate is because he it has a better effect on improving the city then through his promises that many leaders before him already made, and that none have achieved. You see the only way to improve the city is through monumental changes and events, at this point the only way to move the government enough to finally clean its city is to assassinate the a leader. So the whole point in dressing up like a lunatic, new clothes and new hair, and kill the candidate is so that it shows just how crazy and dirty the city is, and how desperately in need of a clean up it needs. When he fails he just decides to do some cleaning of his own and as we know a bloody mess. The first method is ideally more effective but sometime one needs to do things themselves. The reason why Martin Scorsese made Travis appear as a hero because he wants to show that he really was. Scorsese was trying to show that Travis was the right and noble one in the city for doing something about it, displaying his heroism. I think another reason for making Travis out as a hero was for the veterans in the Vietnam war. Scorsese luckily avoided being drafted himself, and like so many people of the time disagreed with it however respected and honored the veterans who fought. (Reply to this) (Thread)

Ralph Mallari (Anonymous) 2007-05-30 15:45 (link)

This movie was fantasic, it was a slow start but i got the hang of it and even started to like it. Its so strange how they make this movie and were in americans time it was made. This doode totaly has lost hes mind since the war and just how much pain he has gone throught seeing friend get shot and people dying just gives him the effect that he wants to make a change in the world and the first place to start is the street. We don't see it but the streets are dangerous when there are dangerous people... such like pimps, hoes, gangters, and thugs. oh man i would have never thought that there were so many horny people in the world concidering that theres small porno movie theaters out in the town. When he took her on a date to the porn film was just wrong i mean who would ever do that, i guess hes been out in the war so long that he thinks everythings ok. But really its not. He killed the presidential person because what he promised to due just werent true he just wanted to win the peoples vote so he can be as currput as the streets its self. But when he failed man that was on bloody scene.. Am not sure how he ends up being the hero even though he has a dishonorable discharge in the army.. i used to think you were a trator if you had such a discharge. The Director really showed us that people can change with time being the key. What else seems to change is the world when an event that hurts us hurts others. Great movie i wish it didnt end.. (Reply to this) (Thread)

Cerda, Erika (Anonymous) 2007-06-01 14:48 (link)

This was a very confusing and boring movie. I don,t under stand why he's always mad and wants to kill Betsy although at one point I don't even know who he really wants to kill. One part I did like was when saves Jody Foster and gives her money to return home. But In the end what confused me more was that he killed a lot of people but at the very end he's recognized as a hero. (Reply to this) (Thread)