10 Movies Like Taxi Driver: Gritty Urban Night Films 2026

"Martin Scorsese reunites with screenwriter Paul Schrader for the closest spiritual cousin to Taxi Driver imaginable. Nicolas Cage plays a burnt-out paramedic working the graveyard shift in Hell's Kitchen, hallucinating the ghosts of patients he couldn't save. The city pulses as a character, and that same drowning-in-the-gutter desperation seeps into every frame."

"Paul Schrader returns to the existential torment he mined in Taxi Driver, this time with Ethan Hawke as a small-town reverend spiraling into despair. It swaps Manhattan for upstate New York, but that crushing isolation u2014 a man alone with his diary, his anger, and a world that feels beyond redemption u2014 is pure Schrader."

"Scorsese and De Niro's other collaboration about a dangerously delusional loner obsessed with fame. Rupert Pupkin is Travis Bickle with a laugh track u2014 equally terrifying, equally pitiable, equally convinced the world owes him something. The nighttime New York backdrop and uncomfortable humor make this essential viewing for anyone chasing that Taxi Driver unease."

"Harvey Keitel's unnamed cop wanders a decaying New York City in a haze of addiction and moral collapse. Abel Ferrara strips away every shred of glamour from the nocturnal urban landscape, leaving raw spiritual rot. This is what happens when Travis Bickle gets a badge instead of a hack license."

"Alain Delon's hitman Jef Costello drifts through rain-soaked Parisian streets in a trench coat, saying almost nothing, connecting with no one. Jean-Pierre Melville crafts the ultimate study of urban solitude u2014 a man whose entire existence is a nightwalk. If Taxi Driver is New York alienation, this is its Parisian mirror image."

"Lodge Kerrigan's staggering debut follows a schizophrenic man driving through coastal towns searching for his daughter. The sound design alone u2014 intrusive, distorted, overwhelming u2014 puts you inside a fractured mind the way Taxi Driver's voiceover puts you inside Bickle's. This is alienation rendered as sensory horror."

"Yes, really. Kevin Smith's convenience-store odyssey is Taxi Driver played for existential comedy u2014 a guy trapped in a dead-end job, watching humanity parade past his counter at all hours, quietly resentful and disconnected. The black-and-white New Jersey nightscape and aimless drifting capture that same nowhere-to-go energy, just with more Star Wars debates."

"Before Taxi Driver, there was Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo u2014 two lost souls navigating a New York City that devours the naive and desperate. Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight create an unlikely bond, but the city's nighttime cruelty and the overwhelming sense of being invisible in a crowd directly anticipate Scorsese and Schrader's vision."

"Howard Ratner isn't alienated like Travis Bickle u2014 he's drowning in the city instead of drifting above it. But the Safdie Brothers' Manhattan Diamond District anxiety attack captures that same desperate, sweaty, 3 AM energy of a man whose self-destruction is inseparable from the urban ecosystem around him."

"Lars von Trier strips the city away entirely, leaving only chalk outlines on a soundstage u2014 and somehow makes it feel more oppressively urban than any real street. Nicole Kidman's Grace wanders this bare-bones town the way Bickle prowls Manhattan: observing, judging, and ultimately deciding what the community deserves. The minimal set forces you to sit with the isolation."