Editing Taxi Driver (section)

== Themes and interpretations ==
[[Roger Ebert]] of the ''[[Chicago Sun-Times]]'' has written of the film's ending:
{{blockquote|There has been much discussion about the ending, in which we see newspaper clippings about Travis's "heroism" of saving Iris, and then Betsy gets into his cab and seems to give him admiration instead of her earlier disgust. Is this a fantasy scene? Did Travis survive the shoot-out? Are we experiencing his dying thoughts? Can the sequence be accepted as literally true? ... I am not sure there can be an answer to these questions. The end sequence plays like music, not drama: It completes the story on an emotional, not a literal, level. We end not on carnage but on redemption, which is the goal of so many of Scorsese's characters. They despise themselves, they live in sin, they occupy mean streets, but they want to be forgiven and admired.<ref>[https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-taxi-driver-1976 Great Movie: Taxi Driver] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161009203614/http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-taxi-driver-1976 |date=October 9, 2016 }} [[RogerEbert.com]] January 1, 2004. Retrieved October 18, 2016.</ref>}}
[[James Berardinelli]], in his review of the film for ''[[ReelViews]]'', argues against the dream or fantasy interpretation, stating:

{{blockquote|Scorsese and writer Paul Schrader append the perfect conclusion to ''Taxi Driver''. Steeped in irony, the five-minute epilogue underscores the vagaries of fate. The media builds Bickle into a hero, when, had he been a little quicker drawing his gun against Senator Palantine, he would have been reviled as an assassin. As the film closes, the [[misanthropy|misanthrope]] has been embraced as the model citizen—someone who takes on pimps, drug dealers, and mobsters to save one little girl.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://preview.reelviews.net/movies/t/taxi.html |title=ReelViews Movie Review |publisher=Reelviews.net |access-date=April 4, 2012 |archive-date=November 14, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201114035621/https://preview.reelviews.net/movies/t/taxi.html |url-status=live }}</ref>}}
On the 1990 [[LaserDisc]], [[DVD]] and [[Blu-ray]], Scorsese acknowledges several [[Film criticism|critics]]' interpretation of the film's ending as Bickle's dying dream. He admits that the last scene of Bickle glancing at an unseen object implies that Bickle will fall into rage and recklessness in the future and that he is like "a ticking time bomb".<ref>''Taxi Driver'' LaserDisc commentary</ref>

Writer Paul Schrader confirms this in his commentary on the 30th-anniversary DVD, stating that Travis "is not cured by the movie's end", and that "he's not going to be a hero next time".<ref>''Taxi Driver'' audio commentary with Paul Schrader</ref> When asked on the website [[Reddit]] about the film's ending, Schrader said that it is not to be taken as a dream sequence but that he envisions 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".<ref name="SchraderRedditIAMA">{{cite web |last=Schrader |first=Paul |title=I am Paul Schrader, writer of Taxi Driver, writer/director of American Gigolo and director of The Canyons. AMA! |url=https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1jr8ai/i_am_paul_schrader_writer_of_taxi_driver/cbhhlz9 |website=Reddit |date=August 5, 2013 |access-date=August 18, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140131034455/http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1jr8ai/i_am_paul_schrader_writer_of_taxi_driver/cbhhlz9|archive-date=January 31, 2014|url-status=live}}</ref>

The film has also been associated with the 1970s wave of [[vigilante film]]s, but it has also been set apart from them as a more reputable [[New Hollywood]] film. While it shares similarities with those films,<ref name="lim">{{cite news |last=Lim |first=Dennis |date=October 19, 2009 |title=Vigilante films, an American tradition |work=[[Los Angeles Times]] |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-oct-19-et-vigilante19-story.html |url-status=live |access-date=December 6, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151208052119/http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/19/entertainment/et-vigilante19 |archive-date=December 8, 2015}}</ref> it is not explicitly a vigilante film and does not belong to that particular wave of cinema.<ref name=novak>{{cite journal |last1=Novak |first1=Glenn D. |title=Social Ills and the One-Man Solution: Depictions of Evil in the Vigilante Film |date=November 1987 |volume=International Conference on the Expressions of Evil in Literature and the Visual Arts |url=http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED301896.pdf |access-date=December 6, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304002914/http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED301896.pdf|archive-date=March 4, 2016|url-status=live}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-taxi-driver-1976 |title=Taxi Driver Movie Review & Film Summary (1976) {{!}} Roger Ebert|last=Ebert|first=Roger|website=www.rogerebert.com|access-date=February 15, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181230080324/https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-taxi-driver-1976|archive-date=December 30, 2018|url-status=live}}</ref>

The film has been labeled as "[[neo-noir]]" by some critics,<ref name="filmsiteamc">{{cite web |last1=Dirks |first1=Tim |title=Film site Movie Review: Taxi Driver (1976) |url=http://www.filmsite.org/taxi.html |website=filmsite.org |publisher=AMC |access-date=May 2, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150419070337/http://www.filmsite.org/taxi.html|archive-date=April 19, 2015|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="neonoir">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VRCgRGFV0ycC&q=taxi+driver+%22neo+noir%22&pg=PA33 |title=Neo-noir: The New Film Noir Style from Psycho to Collateral |last1=Schwartz |first1=Ronald |date=January 1, 2005 |publisher=Scarecrow Press |page=33 |isbn=9780810856769 |access-date=May 2, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151203201450/https://books.google.com/books?id=VRCgRGFV0ycC&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=taxi+driver+%22neo+noir%22&source=bl&ots=XCarly2AG0&sig=mO0IkjUAC02xBA3aCTvubIh4gCI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KkdFVcKXIpK1sATVg4CIDg&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=taxi%20driver%20%22neo%20noir%22&f=false|archive-date=December 3, 2015|url-status=live}}</ref> while others have referred to it as an [[antihero]] film.<ref>{{cite AV media |people=Bouzereau, Laurent (Writer, Director, and Producer) |date=1999 |title=Making Taxi Driver |medium=Television production |minutes=102 |location=United States |publisher=[[Columbia TriStar Home Video]] |quote=The best movies that I know of are the seventies', precisely because I think people were really ... interested by the antihero, which has pretty much gone away now. ... I do think that it would be a movie that it would be very difficult to finance nowadays.}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3569346.stm |work=BBC News |title=De Niro takes anti-hero honours |date=August 16, 2004 |access-date=November 13, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171114041135/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3569346.stm |archive-date=November 14, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref> When shown on television, the ending credits feature 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. ''[[LA Weekly]]'', [[Letterboxd]] and [[Yardbarker]] list this movie as belonging to the [[Exploitation film#Vetsploitation films|vetsploitation]] subgenre.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.laweekly.com/10-vetsploitation-movies-to-watch-over-memorial-day-weekend/ |title=10 VETSPLOITATION MOVIES TO WATCH OVER MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND |last=Sweeney |first=Sean |date=May 25, 2018 |website=[[LA Weekly]] |publisher=Semanal Media LLC |access-date=February 4, 2024 |archive-date=March 9, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240309191436/https://www.laweekly.com/10-vetsploitation-movies-to-watch-over-memorial-day-weekend/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://letterboxd.com/jarrettduncan/list/vetsploitation/ |title=Vetsploitation. List by Jarrett. |date=2018 |website=[[Letterboxd]] |access-date=February 17, 2024 |archive-date=February 4, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240204213704/https://letterboxd.com/jarrettduncan/list/vetsploitation/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.yardbarker.com/entertainment/articles/vietnam_war_movies_ranked/s1__32160941#slide_15 |title=Vietnam War movies, ranked. 11. "Rolling Thunder" |last=Smith |first=Jeremy |date=June 10, 2020 |website=[[Yardbarker]] |access-date=February 29, 2024 |quote=Vetsploitation was a viable Hollywood genre in the late ‘70s and throughout much of the ‘80s. “First Blood," “The Exterminator," “Thou Shalt Not Kill… Except”… even “Taxi Driver” to a degree. |archive-date=March 9, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240309191436/https://www.yardbarker.com/entertainment/articles/vietnam_war_movies_ranked/s1__32160941#slide_15 |url-status=live }}</ref>