After he takes a job as a taxi driver to cope with chronic insomnia, ex-Marine Travis Bickle (Robert “You talkin’ to me” De Niro) begins to see the dark city as one vast cesspool of crime and concupiscence: raunchy streets by night, seedy porn theaters by day, and only one bright spot—the angelic Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a worker for a political campaign. When his angel takes it on the wing, Bickle decides to clean the streets of their depraved human debris.