Taxi Driver-Why Is it a Classic?

With a 98 on Rotten Tomatoes, a 93 on Metacritic and 4 Oscar nominations under its belt, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver is widely considered to be a "classic."  However, I really did not like it that much and struggled to understand what so many people saw in this movie that I did not.  It was just the slow pace of the film throughout that I found hard to get through.  It seemed that the majority of the movie took place inside a lonely cab, narrated by Travis himself accompanied with smooth jazz in the background.  The New York Times review of Taxi Driver described it as "a vivid, galvanizing portrait of a character so particular that you may be astonished that he makes consistent dramatic sense." This made me look back on the film in a different way.  I completely agree with the Times' assertion that Travis is a very unique and innovative character.  I think that if I were to watch it focusing more on Travis' character, I would have enjoyed the film more.  The segments where Travis wrote in his diary would be a lot more entertaining had I analyzed all the things he said and really thought about who he was and what he wanted.  De Niro's character is quite difficult to understand after all. He makes a drastic shift from trying to get the girl from the campaign office to making it his mission to get Iris out of prostitution.  It seems that he really wants to do good, but doesn't quite know the way to go about it.  I now agree with the rest of the film community that Taxi Driver is a genuine classic, because of the amazingly interesting character of Travis.