When in the film Love and Sex, Joe Santino (Josh Hopkins) praised De Niro, I couldn’t quite understand where he was quoting from: “Are you talking to me? Yeah? Are you talking to me? There is no one besides me. So, whom the fuck are you talking to?” And he even made that “De Niro-like” facial expression… It turned out that this is a fragment from Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.
A truly wonderful film! Let me explain my enthusiasm. Well, first of all, the stellar cast alone would have been enough: Robert De Niro (I’ve never seen him so young and handsome!), fourteen-year-old Jodie Foster in the role of the obviously underage prostitute. Her pimp is played by the brilliant Harvey Keitel. And, of course, familiar faces pop up here and there in secondary roles.
But Scorsese didn’t stop there; if he were anyone else, maybe he would have. He made a brilliant thriller, mixed with what seemed like the main character’s mental disorder. The taxi driver is obsessively training to shoot, with a passionate desire to “clean up the city of New York from all the trash.” He even attempts to assassinate a senator running for president. So, there’s love, passion, weapons, and murders at the end, when Travis (De Niro) storms into the brothel where Iris (Foster) was working, and shoots her pimp, the hotel manager, and a client. He himself also gets shot.
But here’s the miracle! It’s a thriller, but it’s strangely positive, because in the end, Travis turns out to be a hero. Iris’s parents get their daughter back, and they write a tearful letter of joy to Travis, who survived, recovered, and is driving a taxi again. The press is full of praise, everyone is happy, and beautiful De Niro is cruising through the streets of New York at night.
I think only a genius director can make a film in such a way that, after a scene with walls and floors literally drenched in blood, the audience is left with a bright and warm feeling in their hearts, even a certain affection for the surrounding world, thinking that maybe everything is actually right, and we, too, will get something good out of it.
P.S.: An interesting fact: This film was already Jodie Foster’s 43rd movie at the time, and she was just 14!