Taxi Driver

The vigilante film told by people who understood the vigilante is unwell. Travis Bickle drives nights through a New York he sees as filth, fixates on saving a child prostitute, and talks himself into violence as a form of meaning. Schrader wrote it, Scorsese directed it, and neither lets you off the hook.

De Niro's performance is definitive, Bernard Herrmann's final score is haunting, and the film's genius is that its bloody climax is received by the city as heroism, which is the most damning thing about it.

Not exploitation, but the film every vigilante picture is secretly measured against.