Taxi Driver

A damaged, unstable loner (Robert De Niro) takes a job driving a cab at night where the degradations of the sweltering city feeds into his madness. After a brief courtship with a beautiful campaign worker (Cybill Shepherd) is terminated, his obsessions turn towards saving the life of a 12-year-old prostitute (Jodie Foster), an unrelenting mission that will lead to a melee of urban violence. Taxi Driver is an uncommonly good film, deep and layered, which engulfs you in the weathers of a man's soul, a first person account if ever there was one in the history of film. Martin Scorsese, in what I feel to be his magnum opus, and screenwriter Paul Schrader use the city to create a terrifying canvas and De Niro demonstrates just what a consummate actor he is, fully immersing himself in his character's dreadful plight and taking the viewer right along with him. This is the kind of film that does not supply easy answers, forces the audience to think, and gets better each time you endure it.