Sliding lubriciously through Manhattan's mean, neon-smeared streets, cabbie
Travis Bickle rages against the city's sin and filth -- God's own psycho wishing
for a hard rain to wash away the scum and make the world clean. The young
... more De
Niro's all wiry muscle waiting to go off, an ascetic with the hot, bright eyes
of an Inquisitor burning with equal parts righteousness and lust. Does he stalk
the beautiful, white-clad campaign worker (Cybill Shepherd), taking her to a porn flick on their first
date, out of psychotic innocence -- or to drag his angel down to sewer level?
(Dim bulb Betsy "gets" Travis through a glass darkly -- he's both "prophet and
pusher, a walking contradiction.") When our avenger in a Mohawk harrows hell to
save another blonde, 15-year-old whore Iris (Jodie Foster), he clothes his homicidal Rapture in the
language of martyrdom: "Here is a man who would not take it anymore, here is
someone who stood up against the scum ... the dogs, the filth, the s---. Here is
a man who stood up." (Everett Collection)Close
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