Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver has to be one of the most disturbing films ever made. Working with the metaphor of the city as sewer, Scorsese catches the sin-stained sensations of New York's teeming streets, where prostitutes, pimps and pushers parade under the scrutiny of Travis Bickle, the cruising cab driver who is a kind of contemporary Quixote. For Travis …, the city is a pile of filth that someone ought to clean up….

Make no mistake about it: … the extraordinary talent of Scorsese is evident again and again. In the past critics have wondered if the young director's gifts were limited; even though his Mean Streets (1973) was widely acclaimed, this depiction of young hoodlums in Little Italy was similar in locale and characterization to Scorsese's earlier Who's That Knocking at My Door? But then the critical reception accorded Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) confirmed that Scorsese could handle a...