Critic Reviews
94
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
positive
22(96%)
mixed
1(4%)
negative
0(0%)
Showing 23 Critic Reviews
100
A brilliant nightmare and like all nightmares it doesn't tell us half of what we want to know.
100
One of Scorsese's most influential and disturbing films on the big screen. [20th Anniversary Release]
100
Its deeply anarchic sensibility has kept Taxi Driver fresh all these years. [20th Anniversary Release]
100
An undeniably brilliant, nightmarish portrait of one man's personal hell.
100
You either love it or you love it; in any case, Martin Scorsese's history-making scald is truly a phenomenon from another day and age.
100
It hasn't aged so much as triumphantly metastasized. [20th Anniversary Release]
100
Scorsese’s direction always keeps us uncomfortably close to Travis’ subjectivity, whether we’re prowling night time Manhattan or gazing into a glass of Alka-Seltzer until the whole world disappears into the healing hiss.
100
Hitchcockian unease permeates the film, but so too does a Godardian use of space and a Bressonian focus on obsession heighten the mounting sense of dread. These elements are groovy for film buffs but are mere icing on the proverbial cake; you don’t need to be in the know to relish Scorsese’s mastery of the form, and what may astonish even more than the creative prowess is how compulsively entertaining the results are.
100
Taxi Driver was a powerfully summarizing work. It synthesized noir, neorealist, and New Wave stylistics; it assimilated Hollywood’s recent vigilante cycle, drafting then-déclassé blaxploitation in the service of a presumed tell-it-like-it-is naturalism that, predicated on a frank, unrelenting representation of racism, violence, and misogyny, was even more racist, violent, and misogynist than it allowed. [35th Anniversary Release]
100
Scorsese's seductive, dreamlike imagery and Schrader's voiceover narration draw the audience into Bickle's head and reveal the world through his eyes, which see only ugliness and filth.
