Taxi Driver

A landmark of American cinema, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver is a searing plunge into the mind of Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), a lonely Vietnam veteran prowling the nocturnal streets of a decaying 1970s New York. Written by Paul Schrader, the film fuses Catholic guilt, Calvinist rigor, and pulp noir fatalism into an unsettling portrait of alienation curdling into violent fantasy. Scorsese’s restless camera and Bernard Herrmann’s final score track the city as infernal dreamscape—at once seductively atmospheric and suffocatingly claustrophobic—as Travis’s vigilante impulses fixate on a child sex worker (Jodie Foster) and a political campaign he barely understands. Long read as an x‑ray of post‑Vietnam disillusionment, a study in radicalization, and a disquieting critique of media hero‑making, Taxi Driver remains as disturbing and hypnotic today as when it first jolted audiences in 1976.

I have never seen this, so I guess it's about time I did. Showtime is 7:00, so let's meet up around 6:45. Afterwards we can linger outside the theater and discuss for a bit.