Taxi Driver

Taxi Driver is a 1976 American film directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Paul Schrader, starring Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle, an alienated, insomniac Vietnam veteran driving a taxi through New York City whose isolation curdles into a violent, self-appointed mission. The film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and its unsettling character study drew heavily on Schrader's own personal crisis while writing the script. Taxi Driver later became associated with a real act of violence when John Hinckley Jr., who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981, stated that his obsession with the film and its co-star Jodie Foster had motivated him, an incident widely discussed alongside the film's standing as one of the most influential American films of its era.