Originally Posted by MichaelMyers
i have seen this movie like a million times and its one of my favorite movies of all time but i have always been confused about one part. Why does Travis go to the senator after his speech and try to pull out a gun and then run away. i dont remember him having any beef with Palantine. it just happened out of no where.
He was going to assassinate the Senator, and most likely die in the process.
I don't know if you picked up on it, as it was
VERY subtle, but Travis was going fu*king insane. As such, pinpointing an exact "reason" for his choice of Palentine as a target is dicey. What we do know is after his obsession with Betsy turned bad, the process was accelerated, and he focused his rage in her direction. But rather than simply kill her or her co-worker at the campaign office, he landed on a more frightening and "worthwhile" plot. He had no "beef" with Palentine, or his politics. Hell, he wasn't even functioning at a level where he knew or cared what the man's politics were. He simply wanted to cause pain to Betsy and something she cared about, and hopefully end his own pain as well, as the Secret Service agents surely would have killed him even if he had been successful with the assassination. It was not a plan motivated by politics or something he was supposed to live through. He would go out in a blaze of bizarre, twisted glory, whereby he would also prove his worth as a man and a soldier worthy of respect for his skill - you know, in his own addled mind.
However, when he sees he is spotted before he can get close enough to the Senator to enact his plan in full, he quickly retreats. Being shot on the perimiter of the action or sent to jail for dozens of years isn't what he wants. So, he quickly shifts to his other obsession: Iris. And his own death is still the final ingredient of the plan.
That you as a viewer, or the police and authroities in
Taxi Driver's narrative, find his assassination of pimps and low-level criminals way uptown to be an understandable and acceptible thing, while his similar thoughts directed toward Palentine in midtown are deemed "insane" is one of the non-character points the end of the film is making. The impulse to kill Sport and "save" Iris comes from the exact same sick impulse to kill the Senator and "destroy" Betsy. They're both equally insane. His falling into a plan B that turned him into a street hero was quite accidental. He's no vigilante. He's a fu*kin' nut. And even though they decide to let Travis go, that they essentially say the deaths of social scum is an unpunishable offence not worth their trouble, that doesn't really change Travis at all. As the final CODA of the film shows with Bickle's quick glance into the rearview mirror as he drops off Betsy, he is still very much a ticking timebomb.
"Someday a real rain will come and wash
all this scum off the street."
Now, how many million times have you watched
Taxi Driver?
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