I can't believe I am the first to write a review of this film.  I'm not worthy.  This movie has been quoted to death and picked apart as much or more then any film in the last quarter century.  There is good reason.  More then anything this movie is a study in madness and sanity.  We all  feel as Travis does sometimes.  The world has gone to hell and a rain  should come and wash away all the garbage off the street, all of it.  Of  course we, as sane people, realise this is wrong thinking and get over it.  Travis does not.  Travis Bickle is an  unbalanced person who just wants to  be a normal person, like anyone else.  He tries this.  He gets a job  driving a cab becouse he can't sleep nights "there's porno theaters  for that" the cab manager tells him.  And indeed there are.  But  Travis has no interest in sex, he just goes into the pornos becouse that's  were other people go, he wants to be like other people.  Had he lived in a  small town instead of New York, he may just as well have followed the heard  into church or to the mall.  his neighborhood has no churches  so he goes  to see dirty movies.  Travis wouldn't know a dirty movie from a pop-tart.  This is made painfully clear when he asks a girl out on a date.  Bickle is  sitting in his cab whe "she" walks by.  Cyble Shepard.  "she" is wearing a white dress, she was like an angle in this  filthy mass, "they must not touch her".  Travis actually  convinces this high class beauty to go to the movies with him.  You can  guess what happens next.  He takes her to the only movies he knows about.  Needless to say, Betsy (shepards character) is not a fan of "Somethime  Sweet Susan" and "Swedish Marrage Manual"  She storms off  and refuses his calls.  Travis didn't mean any harm.  He can not understand  why his genuine efforts to fit in don't work.  He becomes angry and self  absorbed.  He meets a 12 year old prostitute and after  his ill fated date  with Betsy goed to see her.  Harvey Kietel is as good as he has ever been  as the pimp who tells Travis about the little girl he is going to see.  I  won't quote him here as I am sure the good folks at Amason would not  appreciate it, but he gives a graphic detailed discription of all the  sexual things Travis can do with this 12 and a half year old girl.  Travis  had no intentions of doing anything with this child.  He talks to her and  says "you're a young girl you should be in school"  What a nut.  Any sane person can see that she (Iris) is a whore and can only be a whore.  No one in this film, none of the "sane" emotionally stable,  normal people do anything to help or are even upset at this arrangement ( a  pimp and a 12 year old girl) they either buy her services or ignore the  situation.  Bickle takes Iris (Jodie Fosters 12 year old hooker character)  to breakfast and tells her she should not be selling herself on the street  for a bunch of pimps and lowlifes.  In a very moving performance, Jodie  Fosters character looks at him like he is form outer space "I don't  know who's wierder, you or me"  She really can't understand that  someone cares about her and that what she is doing is wrong.  The only  person in the world that says what is right, that 12 year old girls don't  belong ont he streets whoring, is a raving nut.  Who are the crazys and who  are the sane? Travis eventually loses control and goes on a shooting spree.  He kills off a bunch of people the police don't like anyway so he is a  hero.  Some problems can only be solved by a crazy, lonely white guy with a  pistol.  "You talkin' to me?  I don't see nobody else here".  This is the first time Jodie Foster was recognised as a great actress, she  was nominated for best supporting actress and deservedly so.  Martin  Scorsese has done films as good as this, but never better.  I can't  recomend in enough. "Lost Johnny"