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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Mad as Hell and Not Taking It Anymore, May 18, 2000
Some people think this film is about violence or anger or racism. It's not, though. It's about sadness. The sadness that comes when life loses its meaning. The kind of sadness that can drive a man to do terrible things. Michael Douglas stars as an unemployed defense worker who is having a very bad day. It starts with him being stuck in traffic on an L.A. freeway. No one is moving, his air conditioner is broken, and the exhaust fumes are overpowering. Finally, he abandons his car and sets out on foot. (The opening scene is an homage to the opening of Fellini's "8 1/2.") The unnamed Douglas character, as he frequently says, is just trying to get home. He doesn't want any trouble; he just wants to see his family. Events, though, seem to conspire against him. Along the way, he runs into a Korean grocer, Hispanic gangbangers, a homeless man, a neo-Nazi skinhead, and other colorful SoCal denizens who drive him to the edge. That's where the violence begins. This brings him to the attention of Sgt. Prendergrast (Robert Duvall), a police officer who is about to retire. Before he does, though, he is determined to catch Douglas. Despite being on opposite sides of the law, the similarities between these two men are greater than the differences. Both of them are failures at home and at work. Both of them lead lives that have never quite lived up to their expectations; lives of "quiet desperation." The only difference is in how each man copes with his failures. Michael Douglas is excellent in this role, playing it in a very controlled and understated way. It would have been very easy to go over the top with it, but he never does. Duvall is good, as usual, in the more reserved, low profile part. What is most compelling about this story is how real it seems. The things Douglas does are thing we've all thought about doing. The things he feels--the anger, the helplessness--are all things we've felt. In that sense, he represents a side of ourselves; a side we don't want to admit we have, but one that we can't deny.
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85 of 98 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A film that really leaves its mark on you, May 23, 2003
This is a powerful film, but I personally don't look at it as some type of social commentary or condemnation of modern society, although it certainly touches on some of the problems that will always exist among human beings. Falling Down may well have a potent effect on anyone watching it, though. It always leaves me feeling really, really weird because it touches on so many things we all have to put up with each day, presents a monster whom I can't help but sympathize with in some degree, provides us with a hero whose own life is rife with undeserved problems, and runs its course atop a strong undercurrent of sadness. Michael Douglas gives one of his better performances as Bill Foster, an unremarkable man who finds his world torn apart and finally just snaps. He has lost his wife and little girl (which is his own fault); he's lost his job, the one thing that made him feel important; he just wants things to be like they used to be. He doesn't want to sit in traffic with no air conditioning or pay almost a dollar for a little can of soda or see plastic surgeons living the life of Riley while he can't even support his little girl. His journey "home" is an extraordinary one, and the kinds of awful people he encounters on the way do nothing to help his mentality. It's hard not to cheer him on when he manages to effect an escape from a couple of gangsters trying to rob him, but acts such as holding a burger joint up just because they refuse to serve him breakfast after lunch time is, obviously, way out there. No matter what terrible things he does, though, I can't get completely past the fact that he earnestly wants to see his little girl and give her a present for her birthday; in a clearly psychotic way, I find this movie somewhat touching, and that only makes the whole experience more depressing than it already is. Robert Duvall is indeed quite good as the good cop, Prendergast, pursuing this vigilante on his last day before retirement. His life is no dream either, but of course he handles his own problems in a way quite unlike our man Foster does. His wife is clearly disturbed, made frighteningly burdensome and vulnerable by the death of their own little girl and an earlier wounding of her husband on the job. For her benefit, he took a desk job and is forced to put up with a lot of jokes and insults from his fellow cops, including his own boss. Except for his partner, all of the cops in this film are as unfeeling and cruel as some of the shady characters Foster meets up with during his journey home, and that is to me one of the more disturbing aspects of this film. One of the things I liked most about Falling Down was its attempt to portray Foster as one very disturbed man and not a stand-in for any type of stereotypical vigilante; one character in particular makes this point quite clearly when, discovering that Foster doesn't actually agree with him in his own twisted, stereotypically extremist mindset, he asks the man just what kind of vigilante he is supposed to be. My own thinking is that Falling Down is not meant to be a warning about a group of potential Bill Fosters festering in the midst of society; instead, by showing us what happens to one man, it is warning us to walk carefully on our own journeys and to be careful to keep our tempers in check even when the world seems to be out to get us. At the same time, it doesn't imply that we should roll over and play dead whenever a problem comes our way, using the character of Prendergast to show us that we can and should stand up for ourselves but only in constructive ways. I really have a lot of conflicting emotions about this film, but the one thing I am sure of is that Falling Down is an unforgettable motion picture well worth seeing.
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30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Most engaging film Schumacher's done, October 28, 2000
Movie Critics are morons. All of these characters ARE stereotypes, as are the characters in 85% of Hollywood's movies today. Panning this movie for it's blatent use of these cliched people kind of misses 'the point' they were looking for. People are ugly, racist, and selfish. This man (with serious emotional problems) takes a look around his world (downtown LA) and slowly begins breaking down. How many of us can identify with the idea of the American Dream gone wrong? Being menaced by a gang? Being lied to by advertising? 'they lie to everybody'. Micheal Douglas portrayal of a Joe Blow gone bad is mesmerizing. Unlike 'Payback', I actually found myself rooting for the 'bad guy'. What Douglas does is ugly, what we all see everyday is ugly. Robert Duvall (as mentioned before) is rock solid. The DVD's main benefit is crystal clear audio and video. It features scene selection and the trailer. Had it included a few extras (Like a MD or RD commentary track, I'd rate it a 5). This movie is about the 'average man' in a cruddy world who can't take it anymore. He could have been someone you worked with, or saw when you're getting off the bus, or waitied in line behind. And THAT was the point of this movie.
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