14. Travis Bickle
Taxi Driver
A hero for the 70s, Travis Bickle is a lonely, depressed young cabbie in Manhattan who works night shifts due to chronic insomnia. He's develops a crush on a campaign volunteer named Betsy and tries to romance her. Unfortunately Travis is slightly socially awkward and on their first date, he takes her to a Swedish porno and she obviously leaves offended.
Here's where it gets bad. Rejected and now severely depressed, Travis becomes increasingly more psychopathic. Disgusted with the prostitutes and criminals surrounding his nightly drives, he finds a focus for his anger by trying to become a vigilante. This all finally comes into play when he meets Iris, a child prostitue. Much in the way Travis develops obsessions with Betsy and vigilantism, he too becomes preoccupied with saving the naive little girl who believes hanging with pimps and drug dealers is better than getting an education.
By the end, he does save Iris and goes back to his night shift, but the media focus on him as a hero almost pacifies him, transforming him back into the almost-sane person he once was. Albeit now slightly more haunted by his regrets and violent past.
Defining moment: Attempting suicide after murdering an entire house of pimps and gunmen to save Iris, Travis finds all his weapons to be empty. Awaiting the cops arrival, he hauntingly puts his fingers to his head, imitating a gun, and pulls the "trigger" a few times
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