Taxi Driver (1976)
The best example of a sleazy movie that is also one of the all-time great movies. While the filmmaking is top-notch — from Martin Scorsese’s direction to Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster’s Oscar-nominated acting — what makes this film so skillfully sleazy is how Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader somehow get us to root for DeNiro’s creepy, violent and obsessive Travis Bickle.
In a less-daring movie, Travis Bickle would be the villain. But in Taxi Driver, he’s ultimately the hero, because the film depicts a New York City so sleazy that there’s an even creepier and more horrible character, Harvey Keitel’s Sport, who is horrendously exploiting young Iris (Jodie Foster, above).
Schrader would pull this trick again and again, including in the recent The Card Counter and The Master Gardener, and we love him for it.
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