I watched it tonight. Anyone want to talk about it?

Great film.One of the best i've seen.First time i watched it i was pretty shocked at what they said and showed.Some good performances by Foster,DeNiro,Keitel.The ending was the best part.So much blood,so much drama.There's only one thing i don't get in the end when Other than that this was a great film,that i enjoyed very much.

I watched it quite a while ago, but consider it one of the greatest films of all time, or at least in the past 30 years. I don't remember it all that well, but if I'm not mistaken...at the end ...of course I don't remember it too well.

You guys have it all wrong. What happened in the end is that DeNiro dropped the guns as he moved through the building. If you look closely you'll see that the guns he droped look like they belonged to the unarmed guys. Combine that with the fact that the people he killed were scumbags and the newspapers love a hero, and he gets off scot free.

Thanks for clearing that up.That's the only part in the movie i didn't understand.

My interpretation of it was always that at the moment where we see Travis in close-up, all covered in blood, what we see after that is Travis's whishful thinking. You know, what he expected would happen after his killing action.

When you think about it, everything we see afterwards is fake and impossible. Do you really think newspapers would present him as a hero for what he's done? After a killing spree like that? Do you really think that Iris would go back to her loving parents? Do you really think Betsy would all be charming and impressed with Travis for what he's done? That freak?

Everything we perceive in this film is through Travis's own eyes and by the end of the movie, we are definitely in his own mind, not in reality. That's how I always perceived it anyway.

That is also a possible interpretation. Whether it's reality or fantasy, my explanation still works. What you're addressing is an issue of incoherence that has been leveled at the film for years.

I thought that is kind of what I said, that they thought the other dudes did it??? Oh well...

You missunderstand. It doesn't look like they killed each other, but rather that DeNiro acted in self defence, that he was justified to kill them because they were armed, when in fact they were his own guns that he dropped.

I wasn't sure if the end was a dream or a commentary on what a "hero" really is.

I settled on it being a critique of our conception of heroism because i don't like dream endings.

Ah yes, pretty clever, I didn't notice. There was one gun dropped for each body (pretty much) and it's really really hard to say what happened.

But definitly, it's more then possible that Travis is just "dreaming" at the end.

I just went back and watched this scene again, and I noticed a few things. First off, right before Travis kills Harvey Keitel, he asks him if he has a gun. This goes right along with the gun planting thing. Also, as the camera is slowly traveling over all the carnage after the shootout, there is a shot of Keitel, who is dead of course, with a gun in his hand. Clearly this was planted there by Travis since Keitel did not have a gun when he was shot.

And something about the ending. What do you guys think is meant when Travis puts his finger to his temple like a gun? Is he suggesting that he wants the cops to shoot him? If you look, you see he still has a gun in his other hand. Is it posible that he pulled his gun on the cops and they DID kill him? And we just don't see it? The way everything seems to freeze in place is kinda interesting. Maybe this was like a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid type of thing; the image freezes just before the guy gets killed. This would go right along with the theory that everything seen after the shooting is some sort of dream.

Didn't Sport come back (hole still in his stomach) and shoot Travis in the neck?

I don't think Travis MENT to plant the guns, I just think that if the police found one unregistred gun on Travis, and 3 on three other guys, they'll think he attacked in self defense, maybe seeing irisrl being "sold" and getting into an argument, or went to Sport to try and get him to let Iris go. Then got attacked. Espically if combined with testimony from Iris, saying that he came to her and wanted to save her earlier on.

we're watching it tonight in my film noir class. :-)

Cool! have fun!

good movie.

i'd seen it before, a while ago. for some reason i thought travis gave iris the money to go to vermont, she took it and stayed in NY. guess not..

got my final paper on influence of german exp on film noir back. 100 outta 100! yay. yea im gloating, and yea im ashamed.

wasn't even that good a paper. ah, the joys of community college.

Haha, well, in the land of the free (and almost everywhere else for that matter) those with money go to good colleges, the normal guy doesn't. Weird system, I've never liked it...

YEP! I do, and I think Scorcese was saying that that was a possibility.

Post Taxi Driver, the media made a hero out of vigilante (and nut) Bernard Goetz, after he gunned down four men who he thought were going to mug him on the NYC subway. He was lionized as a hero and an "avenging angel" by much of the mainstream media.

http://www.heroism.org/class/1980/goetz.htm

Yup, they would, espically if Iris said he was trying to free her, and the cops found guns on all the other guys. Look at the times they're in, everyone was so utterly depressed because of Nam.