Of all the great films I’ve written Movie Moment pieces about thusfar, Taxi Driver is almost certainly the most celebrated. In fact, it’s been a canonical classic for so long that it’s hard to imagine what it’s like to see it fresh, to say nothing of trying to describe what exactly makes it great to those who haven’t seen it. As with all the great masterpieces of cinema, there’s a temptation to shrug and say that it exists on its own terms, but that would be selling the film, and director Martin Scorsese, short. Taxi Driver is made from many of the same components as a number of films from the period, but what distinguishes it from more routine violent dramas of its time is that it’s primarily a character study. Paul Schrader's screenplay and Scorsese’s direction follows Travis Bickle (played by Robert DeNiro) almost every step of the way so that we feel like we’ve walked in his shoes.
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