Taxi Driver is a fy: 1976 film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader. The movie is set in early post–Vietnam Era New York City and stars Robert De Niro and features Jodie Foster, Albert Brooks, Harvey Keitel, Leonard Harris, Peter Boyle and Cybill Shepherd.

Plot

Travis Bickle (De Niro), who claims to be an honorably discharged Marine (and is implied that he is a Vietnam Veteran), is a lonely and depressed young man of 26. His origins are unknown, although it is likely that he is from the Midwest. He sends his parents cards, lying about his life and saying he works with the Secret Service. He settles in Manhattan where he becomes a night time taxi driver due to chronic insomnia.Taxi Driver 1976. Columbia Pictures Bickle spends his restless days in seedy porn theaters and works 12 or 14 hour shifts during the evening and night time hours carrying passengers among all five boroughs of New York City.

Bickle becomes interested in "Betsy" (Cybill Shepherd), a campaign volunteer for New York Senator "Charles Palantine," who is running for the presidential nomination and is promising dramatic social change. She is initially intrigued by Bickle and agrees to a date with him after he flirts with her over coffee and sympathizes with her own apparent loneliness. She compares him to a character in the Kris Kristofferson song "The Pilgrim." On their date, however, Bickle is clueless about how to treat a woman and thinks it would be a good idea to take her to a Swedish sex education film (Language of Love). Offended, she leaves him and takes a taxi home alone. The next day he tries to reconcile with Betsy, phoning her and sending her flowers, but all of his attempts are in vain.

Rejected and depressed, Bickle's thoughts begin to turn violent. Disgusted by the petty street crime (especially prostitution) that he witnesses while driving through the city, he now finds a focus for his frustration and begins a program of intense physical training. He buys a number of pistols from an illegal dealer (Steven Prince) and practices a menacing speech in the mirror, while pulling out a pistol that he attached to a home-made sliding action holster on his right arm ("You talkin' to me?"). He develops an ominously intense interest in Senator Palantine's public appearances and it seems that he somehow blames the presidential hopeful for his own failure at wooing Betsy and maybe hopes to include her boss in his growing list of targets. In an accidental warm-up, Bickle randomly walks into a robbery in a run-down grocery and shoots the robber (Nat Grant) in the face; adding to the bizarre violence, the grocery owner (Victor Argo) then proceeds to club the near-dead stickup man with a steel pole.

Bickle is revolted by what he considers the moral decay around him. One night while on shift, "Iris" (Jodie Foster), a 12-year-old child prostitute, gets in his cab, attempting to escape her pimp. Shocked by the occurrence Bickle fails to drive off and the pimp, "Sport" (Harvey Keitel), reaches the cab. Sport gives Bickle a crumpled twenty dollar bill, which haunts Travis with the memory of his failure to help. Later seeing Iris on the street he pays for her time, although he does not have sex with her and instead tries to convince her to leave this way of life behind. The next day, they meet for breakfast and Bickle becomes obsessed with saving this naive child-woman who thinks hanging out with hookers, pimps and drug dealers is more "hip" than dating young boys and going to school.