taxi driver

well, i don't think there's any respectable movie site or blog which didn't discuss this all-time classic. Directed by Martin Scorsese in 1976, Taxi Driver is widely regarded as a masterpiece, despite not having been rewarded with any Academy Award. Actually, not even the nominations it received [Best Picture, Best Actor (Robert De Niro), Best Supporting Actress (Jodie Foster), and Best Original Score (Bernard Herrmann)] managed to cover the brilliance of the movie and the people behind it, since neither director Martin Scorsese, nor screenwriter Paul Schrader, or cinematographer Michael Chapman gained any recognition.

The powerfully insightful tagline "On every street in every city, there's a nobody who dreams of being a somebody." manages to focus in just a few words the entire story of the movie. And not only. Cause the movie still echoes in many of today's social, political and psychological realities. Robert De Niro achieves a wonderful performance as nighttime taxi driver Travis Bickle, a mentally unstable, but rather special guy who overcomes the premises of being an obsessed freak, ending up as the local hero.

Quotes:

• Travis Bickle: The days go on and on... they don't end. All my life needed was a sense of someplace to go. I don't believe that one should devote his life to morbid self-attention, I believe that one should become a person like other people.
• Travis Bickle: June twenty-ninth. I gotta get in shape. Too much sitting has ruined my body. Too much abuse has gone on for too long. From now on there will be 50 pushups each morning, 50 pullups. There will be no more pills, no more bad food, no more destroyers of my body. From now on will be total organization. Every muscle must be tight.
• Travis Bickle: I'll tell you why. I think you're a lonely person. I drive by this place a lot and I see you here. I see a lot of people around you. And I see all these phones and all this stuff on your desk. It means nothing. Then when I came inside and I met you, I saw in your eyes and I saw the way you carried yourself that you're not a happy person. And I think you need something. And if you want to call it a friend, you can call it a friend. Betsy: Are you gonna be my friend? Travis Bickle: Yeah.