a review of 出租车司机

Solving the male loneliness epidemic by taking lessons on praxis from comic books. I'm going crazy trying to wrap my mind around why people seem to like this movie so much. I love having a villain as the protagonist, and if I interpret the movie through that lens I can not only see the appeal - but see how it inspired so much media I loved after it. The problem is I think the movie is at best taking an ambiguous stance on whether or not he is a villain - and I think that kind of ambiguity wouldn't make you interesting - it would make you a hack. By the end of the movie, Travis "Involuntary Celibate" Bickle is seen by everyone as a hero because he took out his violent urges on a child pimp rather than a politician. But that doesn't make him a hero; and since the movie uncritically shows us people, most notably the girl he was a massive fucking creep to, thinking he's a hero, the interpretation best supported by the text is that vigilante justice is how you get over being an incel. Thats just - not an interesting commentary on masculinity. Maybe it was in 1976, but we got Fight Club and Breaking Bad now. We can hold ourselves to higher standards.