Taxi Driver, Directed by Martin Scorsese

Starring Robert De Niro

Behold! One of the greatest films of all time, according to critics and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences! Robert De Niro! Jodie Foster! Harvey Keitel! Others!

I thought it just okay.

I’m not a psychologist, but I don’t think Travis Bickle fits the “psycho” label. Or at least to the degree as others on my reading/watching list for this semester. Maybe it’s because of his service in Vietnam, but I felt Bickle was less psycho and more traumatized. Here’s a man who spent three years in the Marine Corps, probably a good chunk of that time in Vietnam, and when he was discharged he was just set loose without the benefit of separation or psychological counseling. This is all stuff that’s common now, but to a soldier or Marine coming out of one of the most unpopular wars (that we arguably did not win), there was a severe sense of abandonment.

The U.S. government spent a lot of time and money turning military members into killers with no clear mission. Unlike wars before, where the mission was to preserve American freedoms, our servicemembers went to Vietnam with little more than propaganda to motivate their fighting. I’m not saying that all servicemembers were damaged and forgotten by the government, but in the case of this movie, that’s exactly what happened.

So, we have Travis Bickle, who probably suffers from some sort of post-traumatic stress syndrome, trying to find his way in the big city. That itself is a huge contrast from the jungles of Vietnam. He spent so much time fighting for something he didn’t understand, that when he comes home he can only see the filth and decay wrought by those fortunate enough not to do the same. I’ll say it, I’d be pissed and a little crazy too.

He was trained to be a hero, but Vietnam wasn’t a hero’s war; it was something uncertain and dirty and amorphous. When he came home, Bickle just wanted to fulfill the destiny that was promised to him.

He sees Betsy, the attractive campaign volunteer, being used the same way he was by politicians. So he attempts to free he from it. First, by trying to date her and convincing she’s being treated poorly. Is this his warning to her that he knows how it is to be treated unfairly by politicians? To be used for their gain? Am I reading too much into the film? Or not enough? If I write the rest of this in questions, will anybody notice?

Of course, their courtship ends abruptly when he takes her to an adult theater. Is it because he’s a psycho, or because his own midwestern innocence has been corrupted by the porn and prostitution so sought after in Vietnam? It’s easy to believe that he feels that sort of film is normal after being subjected to attitudes that condone it while serving oversees. I myself saw early on in my military career the normalization of porn and prostitution, two subjects I grew up feeling were taboo. Things have changed since then of course, but if I’d left the military after my first tour, would I have still believed them to be taboo, or would I have embraced them as normal for a short time following my discharge?

Betsy shuns him, so he takes it to the next level: kill the man who is enslaving her before she can be used further. That also fails so he goes after solving the greatest social injustice he’s aware of: the prostitution of a 12.5-old-girl. Jodie Foster, who was that age for the filming of the movie, was absolutely superb in her role. It would be easy to dismiss her as older than she actually was, just by her acting chops.

He knows he’s damaged going into the climax, but he also feels he’s on a mission as seen by his mohawk. Soldiers and Marines in Vietnam would often shave their heads or give themselves a mohawk before going on what they thought of extremely important, difficult missions. That comes across in this film, and is a nice touch on the part of the filmmakers, yet the reasoning is lost on a lot of new audiences. They just see it as a kooky move by Travis Bickle to show how crazy he really is.

But he isn’t crazy, not like the rest of the villains in this course. After the shootout, in which he takes out three baddies, he’s hailed a hero and returns to work as a cab driver. We see him return to a normal life as he knows it, but there is no sense that he’s still out for blood.

Was this a great film? Probably. Is it one that I love? No. Not because it wasn’t good, but because it’s not what it’s marketed as. It should be marketed as a war movie, not a psychological thriller. I will say it's a far better film than Jarhead, which arguabley had the same message.