Taxi Driver

It works its strange alchemy with riveting force… With this extraordinary film, Scorsese confirms his standing among our finest young directors. It is, among other things, a testament to the versatility that last produced Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.

Taxi Driver is so volatile it nearly explodes from the screen. Under Martin Scorsese's brilliant direction, it works a dramatic tension that is inescapable, carefully, systematically straitjacketing its audience in the problems of its central character.

Remove the cataclysmic ending from Taxi Driver and it would be one smashingly good motion picture. As it stands, the film is beautiful to look at, exciting to listen to, but much too much to stomach.

Whatever else anybody comes to think about Taxi Driver, it has a muscle-tensing, skin-prickling, apprehensive suspense that builds from those first unsettling moments like an air-raid siren.

All these things might be reconciled and resolved, if only the film probed deeper instead of trying merely to astonish and dazzle. Obviously, it is the offspring of an unholy union.

Like any genuine nightmare, Taxi Driver induces terror because its hideousness grows out of pure, if awful, human truth.

Bickle was a warning to all of us, on what can occur if we push people to the edges of society.

One of the most disturbing -- and controversial -- studies of loneliness ever placed on screen.

Anchored by De Niro's chilling performance, it is easy to see why it ranks in the top 100 films of all time.

Experiencing the film on an insulated, intellectual level is a virtual impossibility, thanks to a central performance so individualized and affecting that Travis is never in danger of becoming a statistic or a symbol.