not to be taken as a dream sequence but that he envisioned it as returning to the beginning of the film, as if the last frame "could be spliced to the first frame, and the movie started all over again." The film has also been associated with the 1970s wave of vigilante films, but it has also been set apart from them as a more reputable New Hollywood film. While it shares similarities with those films, it is not explicitly a vigilante film and does not belong to that particular wave of cinema. The film can be seen as a spiritual successor to The Searchers, according to Roger Ebert. Both films focus on a solitary war veteran who tries to save a young girl who is resistant to his efforts. The main characters in both movies are portrayed as being disconnected from society and incapable of forming normal relationships with others. Although it is unclear whether Paul Schrader sought inspiration from The Searchers specifically, the similarities between the two films are evident. The film has been labeled as "neo-noir" by some critics, while others have referred to it as an antihero film. When shown on television, the ending credits featured a black screen with a disclaimer mentioning that "the distinction between hero and villain is sometimes a matter of interpretation or misinterpretation of facts." This disclaimer was thought to have been added after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981, but in fact, it had been mentioned in a review of the film as early as 1979. Reception Box office The film opened at the Coronet Theater in New York City and grossed a house record of $68,000 in its first week. It went on to gross $28.3 million in the United States, making it the 17th-highest-grossing film of 1976. Critical response The film received critical acclaim. Roger Ebert instantly praised it as one of the greatest films he had ever seen, claiming: Taxi Driver is a hell, from the opening shot of a cab emerging from stygian clouds of steam to the climactic killing scene in which the camera finally looks straight down. Scorsese wanted to look away from Travis's rejection; we almost want to look away from his life. But he's there, all right, and he's suffering. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 96% based on 96 reviews and an