A.A. Dowd, The A.V. Club:
Taxi Driver is rarely as much fun as Goodfellas or Mean Streets or The Wolf Of Wall Street is. There are no iconic classic-rock montages, no Rolling Stones boogies. The ugly characters tend to be really ugly, not hilariously so. (Marty himself appears in a very unflattering cameo, oozing violent misogyny and racism from the backseat of Bickle’s cab.) Where many of Scorsese’s most popular movies unfold as a breathless series of great set pieces, Taxi Driver has a more cumulative brilliance; it’s a downward spiral into madness from the first frame onward.
We’ve all seen our share of “edgy” and “dark” films. It’s almost become a punchline in the independent theme, especially in the horror genre. But it’s hard to top the darkness that Scorcese nails so perfectly in Taxi Driver. What a film.