Falling Down (1993)

France, United States of America

Crime, Drama, Thriller

Warner Bros. Pictures, Arnold Kopelson Productions, Le Studio Canal+, Regency Enterprises, Alcor Films

Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall, Barbara Hershey, Rachel Ticotin, Tuesday Weld, Frederic Forrest

Joel Schumacher

Ebbe Roe Smith

Taglines: The adventures of an ordinary man at war with the everyday world.

detective, rocket launcher, retirement, traffic jam, gang, los angeles, california, divorce, anger, inequality, road rage, urban decay, laid off, disturbed, unassuming, price gouging

An ordinary man frustrated with the various flaws he sees in society begins to psychotically and violently lash out against them.

Reviews:

Author: BinaryCrunch
Having just watched this movie I can say that I enjoyed it, not overly so. Its not really a tale of urban reality more that the everyday annoyances that we do nothing about and this guy turns them into a personal insult. Its starts normally enough, stuck in traffic, beep noises and drilling on a hot day, his AC is broken, the window is broken. Instead of just shrugging it off with that Monday feeling he just abandons his car and goes for a walk, to start with its a shop owner with overpriced drinks that gets his shop smashed up a bit, later only when threatened with violence himself does he defend himself against 2 gang members. This is where things start to suddenly go weird, the gang members drive round and stumble across him somehow, (I'm British but I think LA is a little too big for that) then spray bullets in a drive by 20ft away and miss him completely but hit everyone around him and then they promptly crash. He walks over to the car, collects a bag of guns from it then goes and shoots up a burger bar because they are not serving breakfast, which he then changes his mind to lunch anyway and it continues from there. I don't know if this was meant to show some sort of mental brakedown due to his previous life choices but his empathy just disappears. At the start you could relate to the character but the more you watch the more you begin to distance yourself from that notion until you realise you just watched a movie where a guy went round killing people for no reason other than anger at himself for destroying his family life. It leaves me wondering if that was the directors intention or a happy coincidence to push that prospective on the viewer.