3 minutes with the Taxi Driver

Cold stare. Desire. Gunpowder. Blood. Insomnia. Flag down this taxi driver.
Sir, sa Krus na Ligas tayo. Sa looban. The taxi meter starts to tick at the wee hours of the night.

Directed by Martin Scorsese
Produced by Julia Phillips and Michael Phillips
Written by Paul Schrader

Starring:
Robert De Niro
Jodie Foster
Albert Brooks
Harvey Keitel
Leonard Harris
Peter Boyle
Cybill Shepherd

Music by Bernard Herrmann
Cinematography by Michael Chapman
Editing by Tom Rolf and Melvin Shapiro
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release date(s): 8 February 1976 (US)
Running time: 113 minutes
Country United States
Language: English

Wikipedia: "Taxi Driver is a 1976 film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader. The movie is set in New York City, soon after the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro and features Albert Brooks, Harvey Keitel, Leonard Harris, Peter Boyle, Cybill Shepherd, and a young Jodie Foster. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including "Best Picture", and won the Palme d'Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival.

Travis Bickle (De Niro) is a lonely and depressed young man of 26. His origins are unknown. He occasionally sends his parents cards, lying about his life and saying he works for the government on a secret project. He settles in Manhattan, where he becomes a night time taxi driver due to chronic insomnia.[1] Bickle spends his restless days in seedy porn theaters and works 12 or 14 hour shifts during the evening and night time hours carrying passengers among all five boroughs of New York City. He keeps a diary which is used as narration throughout the film. An honorably discharged Marine, it is strongly implied that he is a Vietnam veteran; he keeps a charred flag of South Vietnam in his squalid apartment and has a large scar on his back.

Bickle becomes interested in Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a campaign volunteer for New York Senator Charles Palantine (Leonard Harris), who is running for the presidential nomination and is promising dramatic social change. She is initially intrigued by Bickle and agrees to a date with him after he flirts with her over coffee and sympathizes with her own apparent loneliness. She compares him to a character in the Kris Kristofferson song "The Pilgrim, Chapter 33": "He's a prophet and a pusher, partly truth, partly fiction - a walking contradiction." On their date, however, Bickle is clueless about how to treat a woman and thinks it would be a good idea to take her to a Swedish sex education film (Language of Love). Offended, she leaves him and takes a taxi home alone. The next day he tries to reconcile with Betsy, phoning her and sending her flowers, but all of his attempts are in vain.[1]

Rejected and depressed, Bickle's thoughts begin to turn violent. Disgusted by the petty street crime (especially prostitution) that he witnesses while driving through the city, he now finds a focus for his frustration and begins a program of intense physical training. He buys a number of pistols from an illegal dealer (Steven Prince) and practices a menacing speech in the mirror, while pulling out a pistol that he attached to a home-made sliding action holster on his right arm ("You talkin' to me?"). He develops an ominously intense interest in Senator Palantine's public appearances, and it seems that he somehow blames the presidential hopeful for his own failure at wooing Betsy and maybe hopes to include her boss in his growing list of targets. In an accidental warm-up, Bickle randomly walks into a robbery in a run-down grocery and shoots the robber (Nat Grant) in the face; adding to the bizarre violence, the grocery owner (Victor Argo) encourages Bickle (who has no permit for his guns) to flee the scene and then proceeds to club the near-dead stickup man with a steel pole.

One night while on shift, Iris (Jodie Foster), a 12-year-old child prostitute, gets in his cab, attempting to escape her pimp.[1] Shocked by the occurrence, Bickle fails to drive off and the pimp, "Sport" (Harvey Keitel), reaches the cab. Sport gives Bickle a crumpled twenty-dollar bill, which haunts Bickle with the memory of his failure to help. Later seeing Iris on the street he pays for her time, although he does not have sex with her and instead tries to convince her to leave this way of life behind. The next day, they meet for breakfast, and Bickle becomes obsessed with saving this naïve child-woman, who thinks hanging out with hookers, pimps, and drug dealers is more 'hip' than dating young boys and going to school.

Bickle acquires a crude Mohawk haircut for a public rally in which he actually attempts to assassinate Senator Palantine. He is spotted by Secret Service men and flees.[1] Bickle returns to his apartment and then drives to Alphabet City where he shoots Sport in the abdomen, after which he storms into the brothel and kills the bouncer, Sport (who has followed Bickle), and Iris' mafioso customer. He then calmly tries repeatedly to fire a bullet into his own head from under his chin, but all the weapons are empty, so he resigns himself to resting on a convenient sofa until police arrive on the scene of mayhem and carnage and pretends to shoot himself when the police find him.

A brief epilogue shows Bickle recuperating from the incident. He has received a handwritten letter from Iris's parents who thank him for saving their daughter, and the media (including Senator Palantine) hail him as a hero for saving her as well.[1] Bickle blithely returns to his job, where one night one of his fares happens to be Betsy. She comments about his saving of Iris and Bickle's own media fame, yet Bickle denies being any sort of hero. He drops her off without charging her and continues driving into the night--though not before hearing a small, piercing noise which causes him to stare hesitantly at an unseen object in his taxi's rearview mirror--possibly indicating a relapse of his past violent tendencies seen earlier in the film."