Many people have said many nasty things about Joel Schumacher for what he did to Batman on the big screen. Every single one of them has been entirely deserved. But those insults should be softened with just a little praise for making a bold urban nightmare like this film.
Falling Down is the story of a man who is stuck in traffic one day when his tolerance for the world is finally used up. Identified only by his license plate "D-Fens", the man (Michael Douglas) abandons his car and starts walking. He says he's going home, but where he's going isn't his home anymore. His ex-wife Beth and daughter Adele (Barbara Hershey and Joey Hope Singer) now live there and Beth has a restraining order against D-Fens. As he walks his way across Los Angeles, D-Fens has a series of violent encounters, first with the everyday aggravations of life in the big city. From busting up the shop of a immigrant merchant who speaks broken English to confronting some gang bangers to a gun point rant against the unctuous martinets at a fast food restaurant, D-Fens eventually graduates to more brutal acts against more existential frustrations like neo-Nazi gun nuts, pointless road construction and the vicious sense of entitlement among the wealthy. All the while, getting every closer to Beth and Adele.
As reports of D-Fens' slow moving rampage come in, the only one to figure out what's going on is a cop spending his last day on the job. Detective Prendergast (Robert Duvall) is retiring early, an taking a reduced pension, to satisfy the demands of his insecure, needy and somewhat unstable wife. Aided by the only cop he's friends with (Rachel Ticotin), Prendergast sets out to stop D-Fens before this day turns out to be the last day in the life of a lot of people.
Falling Down is a smart film that takes on two cultural phenomena of the early 1990s. One is the concept of "going postal", where relatively normal men started going into their workplaces and shooting people. The other is the sense of economic disenfranchisement that came out of the recession that bridges the first Bush and Clinton Administrations. Now granted, as befitting a Joel Schumacher picture, this movie doesn't take those subjects on with any subtlety. But it does address them thoroughly with both empathy and honesty.
Schumacher, Michael Douglas and screenwriter Ebbe Roe Smith combine to make D-Fens a character who defies easy definition. He's neither the righteous vigilante of right wing fantasies nor a liberal's easily dismissed symbol of white male intolerance. He's a man who can legitimately claim he's been victimized by society, yet he's also a man whose seething rage terrifies the ones closest to him. Most of the carnage he creates is accidental or without malice, yet his ultimate goal is the darkest sort of evil. D-Fens is someone you cannot completely embrace or reject. You can only wonder how much of yourself is reflected in him.
The whole film is somewhat like that. Most of the characters, even minor ones, are given depth and personalities like they're real human beings and not just constructs serving the script. They experience genuine humor and friendship and anguish and fear in a way this sort of high-concept movie usually doesn't provide.
The contrast between D-Fens and Prendergast that runs through the story is a great example of that kind of complexity. They're both guys whose lives aren't working out like they wanted. One has a failed marriage and a lost career, the other a dead daughter and a crazy wife he feels responsible for. The ways they deal with those challenges are quite different. D-Fens is an idealist who cares about the way he thinks things should be, at the expense of the other people in the world with him. Prendergast is a pragmatist who takes the world as it is and does what he has to do to get by, without even thinking it could be any other way.
I suspect that Falling Down has not gotten the acclaim it deserves because it's a mainstream work of entertainment that won't fit neatly into a particular box. It looks and sounds like a white male power trip, but it feels much more introspective and melancholy and despairing. I find it to be a compelling story with some great acting and I think you should give it a look.
Falling Down is the story of a man who is stuck in traffic one day when his tolerance for the world is finally used up. Identified only by his license plate "D-Fens", the man (Michael Douglas) abandons his car and starts walking. He says he's going home, but where he's going isn't his home anymore. His ex-wife Beth and daughter Adele (Barbara Hershey and Joey Hope Singer) now live there and Beth has a restraining order against D-Fens. As he walks his way across Los Angeles, D-Fens has a series of violent encounters, first with the everyday aggravations of life in the big city. From busting up the shop of a immigrant merchant who speaks broken English to confronting some gang bangers to a gun point rant against the unctuous martinets at a fast food restaurant, D-Fens eventually graduates to more brutal acts against more existential frustrations like neo-Nazi gun nuts, pointless road construction and the vicious sense of entitlement among the wealthy. All the while, getting every closer to Beth and Adele.
As reports of D-Fens' slow moving rampage come in, the only one to figure out what's going on is a cop spending his last day on the job. Detective Prendergast (Robert Duvall) is retiring early, an taking a reduced pension, to satisfy the demands of his insecure, needy and somewhat unstable wife. Aided by the only cop he's friends with (Rachel Ticotin), Prendergast sets out to stop D-Fens before this day turns out to be the last day in the life of a lot of people.
Falling Down is a smart film that takes on two cultural phenomena of the early 1990s. One is the concept of "going postal", where relatively normal men started going into their workplaces and shooting people. The other is the sense of economic disenfranchisement that came out of the recession that bridges the first Bush and Clinton Administrations. Now granted, as befitting a Joel Schumacher picture, this movie doesn't take those subjects on with any subtlety. But it does address them thoroughly with both empathy and honesty.
Schumacher, Michael Douglas and screenwriter Ebbe Roe Smith combine to make D-Fens a character who defies easy definition. He's neither the righteous vigilante of right wing fantasies nor a liberal's easily dismissed symbol of white male intolerance. He's a man who can legitimately claim he's been victimized by society, yet he's also a man whose seething rage terrifies the ones closest to him. Most of the carnage he creates is accidental or without malice, yet his ultimate goal is the darkest sort of evil. D-Fens is someone you cannot completely embrace or reject. You can only wonder how much of yourself is reflected in him.
The whole film is somewhat like that. Most of the characters, even minor ones, are given depth and personalities like they're real human beings and not just constructs serving the script. They experience genuine humor and friendship and anguish and fear in a way this sort of high-concept movie usually doesn't provide.
The contrast between D-Fens and Prendergast that runs through the story is a great example of that kind of complexity. They're both guys whose lives aren't working out like they wanted. One has a failed marriage and a lost career, the other a dead daughter and a crazy wife he feels responsible for. The ways they deal with those challenges are quite different. D-Fens is an idealist who cares about the way he thinks things should be, at the expense of the other people in the world with him. Prendergast is a pragmatist who takes the world as it is and does what he has to do to get by, without even thinking it could be any other way.
I suspect that Falling Down has not gotten the acclaim it deserves because it's a mainstream work of entertainment that won't fit neatly into a particular box. It looks and sounds like a white male power trip, but it feels much more introspective and melancholy and despairing. I find it to be a compelling story with some great acting and I think you should give it a look.