10 Heart-Breaking Film Moments When The Hero Became The Villain

8. Travis Bickle - Taxi Driver

Perhaps 'realised' is too sudden a word for this particular entry. Maybe 'suspected over the entire course of the movie' might fit Travis Bickle slightly better, as we're rarely led to believe that one of Robert De Niro's most famous characters does anything all that heroic during the course of Taxi Driver, but his villainy could also be called into question. Bickle is a troubled, misanthropic young man who can't sleep and wants to help change the world by washing the scum of the earth off the streets while also attempting to protect the young and (what he perceives to be) innocent from the evils of his city. There's a certain amount of sympathy to be gained from Travis' attempts to woo political campaign worker Betsy - an awkward conversation over coffee here and a misguided attempt at present-buying there are all too relatable for young men of a certain nervous disposition - and his desire to keep 12 year-old Iris off the streets is about as noble an aim one could have, though his methods of protecting her vary from eccentric to homicidal. It appears that Travis has finally gone off the deep end when, rejected by Betsy, he attempts to assassinate her boss, Senator Palantine, and fails, resorting to going out in a blaze of glory by saving Iris and killing her pimps in a bloodbath which he miraculously survives and comes out of a hero. Whether this ending is real or Bickle's final delusion is up to the audience to decide, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone coming out of the theatre with the opinion that he carried out any of his actions with pure or heroic intentions.