Genre – Drama
Movie Total Runtime – 1 Hour 52 Minutes
Spoilers – Yes
Through memes and pop culture osmosis, I have an impression of this movie, but it’s vague and unreliable. I’m not terribly enthusiastic about it. It’s in the categoey of “everybody’s heard of it, so why haven’t you seen it?”
Lets get this over with.
We start with a nearly silent shot pulling back from an uncomfortably close, close up to show the Main Character stuck in a traffic jam. The sound slowly returns as it pans around the other vehicles hemming his car in. I immediately notice that these cars are closer together than real traffic, even in a jam. There’s not enough space to walk between them – which isn’t something that happens in actual traffic. Main Character has failed to maintain his car so the AC is broken, as is the window handle. Eventually he gets out and runs away. He eventually phones some woman but fails to speak before hanging up. He decides to call somebody else but lacks change for the pay phone. We did see a cell phone in the traffic jam, it was a giant Motorola brick, so it’s rational for him to not own one. As of a few years ago I had still seen pay phones in the wild, so they may not yet be extinct as of today. I’m rambling about telecommunications to avoid talking about the movie.
I bought it thinking I would want to watch it, but every time it came time to spend the time actually doing so, it struck me as an unpleasant prospect. In order to try to get change for the pay phone Main Character is trying to haggle with a corner store clerk over the price of a can of Coke. Now, $0.85 is an absurd price for the time frame that this movie is set, but you do not haggle at a convenience store, especially not one in a graffiti-laden part of town. Clerk might just shoot you, and nobody would report the gunshot. Main Character mixes up the ethnic background of the clerk, then goes on some kind of rant before refusing to leave when told to do so. This escalates to a scuffle over the clerks sawn-off baseball bat. Main Character gains control of the bat and smashes a display.
Why are we starting the story cranked up to ten? This is literally eleven minutes in and Main Character has already snapped. What’s the remaining hour and forty minutes for? I had always been under the impression that the structure of the film was starting with an escalating bad day until he finally snaps and revisits the earlier scenes of difficulty. But no, we’ve started after the breakdown with no lead-up. I have no idea who this man is, whether he had any semblance of mental stability before, anything. I can make assumptions. His short-sleeve button-down and tie combo is an Engineering Uniform. The falling-apart car makes me think of financial hardships, because the AC and the window don’t just break at the same time. So I’m inclined to think he’s actually unemployed. That would then suggest that the traffic jam was not a daily commute. However, none of this has actually been in the movie. He could just be an unhinged assistant manager at the local K-Mart.
Main Character rants about convenience store pricing as he smashes up the place. Dumb fuck. You’re in a corner store in the ghetto. That bat isn’t there because he’s a baseball enthusiast. The store gets robbed on the regular and plagued by shoplifters. Lowering prices would put it out of business. Main Character claims to not be a thief, but he steals the bat and forces the clerk to accept the lower rate for the Coke. He then calls the same house he did before only to get a busy signal.
The Movie tries to contrast the Main Character’s breakdown with a Retiring Cop who handles problems with more aplomb. It undermines the comparison almost right away as it shows Main Character tearing up a classifieds section of the Newspaper in which he’d had a number of entries circled. Implying that my surmise of unemployment is likely correct. We are show pictures of Retiring Cop’s presumably dead daughter, but also that he has the advantage of a robust social circle and a stable job in which to face the grief from an event who knows how long in the past. While not a minor loss, it’s easier to tackle tragedy when the rest of your life is already in order. Main Character looks like he’s already been repeatedly kicked when he was down.
I don’t like this movie so far, but I do have to give it technical points for storytelling through non-verbal exposition. A couple of thugs accost Main Character and he mouths off and ends up bludgeoning the thugs with the bat as he flies off the handle. He steals their butterfly knife as they run away. Corner store owner makes a statement to Retiring Cop regarding the earlier incident. In the meantime, the Thugs have found other gang members and are cruising in search of revenge. We find out that Main Character is estranged from his family, and forbidden from attending his daughter’s birthday. The Thugs attempt a drive-by and gun down everybody near the payphone except Main Character before getting hit by a pickup. Main Character steals their guns, shooting one of the Thugs in the leg before walking off.
The Movie loses points on audio mixing. The dialog is too quiet compared to the action sequence, so I have it painfully loud to even hear what people are saying. It also loses the points previously gained by having said dialog tell us about the dead daughter I’d already inferred. Main Character watches bums and street peddlers while catching a bus. The jostle of people at the bus door makes him decide to keep walking. There is a clearly marked construction zone that covers just the sidewalk, and instead of just walking around, he opts to confront the sign man. We cut to the Main Character’s ex wife making a police report about the unwanted phone calls and we find out that the violent outbursts are not something new. He’s always had a temper, and the active restraining order tells us it’s part of the reason they’re divorced. It’s explicitly stated that he’s not a domestic abuser.
Rather than escalating things with the Sign Man, Main Character has opted to walk around as instructed and ends up in a park riddled with bums and hippies. Compared to modern California, it’s only lightly infested. After a confrontation with a panhandler, Main Character abandons his briefcase, which only held a bagged lunch. He arrives at a fast food outlet and tries to order breakfast after they’ve switched to the lunch menu. He asks to speak to the manager, then pulls out the aborted line of “The Customer is always right-” leaving off the “-In matters of taste.” The movie tries to claim that the four minute difference between the end of breakfast and the start of the lunch menu is some irrelevant thing. But it’s not. The kitchen is prepping for the lunch rush, it’s after 11:30. You want them to unpack the breakfast items to satisfy one entitled customer after the close of breakfast hours thus further delaying the preparations for the busiest time of day, leading to further knock-on effects in serving the customers to come?
Main Character pulls out a gun and negligently discharges into the ceiling while threatening the customers to return to their tables. We then have the well-known rant against the non-photogenic product fast food places produce. Tell me – why do you expect people who aren’t paid enough to care, rushing to produce hundreds of meals from whatever frozen materials corporate shipped them to whip up something that resembles publicity photos taken of a non-food mockup that is quite literally made of inedible materials? Or are you stupid enough to think food ads are pictures of actual food? The methods and materials used to make them photogenic make them no-longer safe to eat. Nobody calls out the armed madman.
As we approach the halfway mark, Main Character shows even more of a hair trigger as he shoots up a payphone just because somebody was irate about him hogging it. A problem that could have even more easily been solved by just walking away. Meanwhile, Retired Cop has put together the fact that the incidents are all related to a single spree by an individual on foot.
Looking for replacement shoes, Main Character meets Stereotypical Bigot in his surplus store. After learning that the police are looking for Main Character, Stereotypical Bigot mistakes Main Character’s motivations and intent. When they realize they are not aligned, the confrontation starts and escalates, ending with Main Character stabbing Stereotypical Bigot with the butterfly knife stolen from the Thugs, then shooting Stereotypical Bigot dead.
The other cops don’t buy the Retiring Cop’s theory regarding the spree. He goes back to the corner store to talk to the owner, but connects it back to the traffic jam just around the corner.
Having changed into fatigues, Main Character goes back to the construction site and threatens the worker about the reason for the project. He then fires a rocket stolen from Stereotypical Bigot into the works. His unfamiliarity with the safety and trigger mechanisms of the rocket are played for laughs. He leaves the scene and hops the fence of a country club. He loses it on the members and shoots up their golf cart, causing one of the golfers to have a heart attack.
Retiring Cop tracks down Main Character’s current residence with his mother and we find out that he was at one point an engineer with a defense contractor. Fired, not laid off. The cause of the firing is not mentioned. Main Character breaks into the grounds of a plastic surgeon’s house where he finds the caretaker and his family. After some dialog indicating further degraded mental state and attempting to tie back to earlier events, the cops find the dead Stereotypical Bigot, and Main Character reaches his ex-wife’s house. The soundtrack turns particularly insistant suddenly, after having either been silent or comfortably in the background. Ex-wife runs away with the daughter, trying to elude Main Character. He does not find them, so he watches old home movies while holding a water pistol. The old movies further reiterate that Main Character has long been less than stable.
Retiring Cop and partner arrive at Ex-Wife’s house, Main Character shoots partner seriously but non-fatally and leaves on foot. Retiring Cop pursues on to the pier. Main Character spots his Ex-Wife and Daughter and ends up in a confrontation with Ex-Wife. Retiring Cop catches up and tries to talk Main Character down. He uses the same oblique, disarming approach he’s used all movie. During the dialog, the Main Character is literally disarmed. He goes on another rant while held at gunpoint by Retiring Cop. He claims to still have guns on him while attempting suicide by cop. Said gun turns out to be the water pistol from earlier. Main Character is shot and the shoddy railing at the run-down pier fails to keep him from splashing in the water.
Brief anticlimax scene, roll credits.
Having watched it, this is not the movie pop cultural osmosis paints it as. Nor is it the opposite. It is the story of an already violent and broken man on a destructive spree until he his put down. His outbursts are neither righteous nor a critique of anything – neither the surface topic, nor some deeper theme. People have projected onto the film material which is not there.
Honestly, it’s not even that good. Medicore, with some credit for technical proficiency and early non-verbal storytelling, but I never gave a damn about the events which transpired. The best part is that I can now cross it off the list and move on.
What? The guy who complains about everything doesn’t resonate with the Main Character’s rants? No. For two reasons. First, my complaining is merely venting my spleen. Getting the words out so the corrosive thoughts don’t keep eating away. Once the complaining is done, I move on to things that matter. Second, in the narrative context, the complaints are not about the situation at hand. It is a symptom of a broken man lashing out at what is in reach. The content is irrelevant. Third (I know, I said two reasons), they’re misdirected, and ignore key contextual information that a few moments thought would unearth. This is really a mix of one and two, but I wanted to state explicitly.
Don’t bother with this movie.
Context for the time: main character is clearly laid off from one of the many S California defense contractors that did massive downsizings in the early 90’s.
And yes, it’s quite possible for minimum wage workers to either care or pretend to care but there’s a culture that says whatever it and lack of training & oversight by supervisors that allows it.
He wasn’t laid off. It’s explicitly state multiple times he was Fired.
Do you suppose someone – the writer and/or director – erroneously assumed that Everyman Audience Member (a person the likes of which he hasn’t spoken to in many years) would somehow identify and empathize with Main Character? “He’ll be a hero in flyover country!”
Also, I thought it was an ironclad rule in Hollywood that retiring cops are always killed in the line of duty on their day on the job.
(…their LAST day on the job.)
Watch Frank Sinatra in The First Deadly Sin.
You put yourself against Critical Drinker who loves this movie.
#metoo
To each his own, I guess.
So?
If I just regurgitated other people’s opinions, I’d have to call myself a Journalist.
This movie was and still is brilliant.
Ha! I was thinking of watching it this weekend if I had time and could easily find it.
“…the complaints are not about the situation at hand. It is a symptom of a broken man lashing out at what is in reach. The content is irrelevant.” I believe that’s the point.” It was well-regarded. I’d also heard it’s a technically proficient film, but how do you think Douglas did? Folk say he was very good in it.
Sounds like a teenage art film for adults, with everything culminating in childish, pointless destruction because all of life is — well? — pointless destruction. People liked seeing the message lived out I suppose; it grossed $96 million against a $25 million budget. See also loud, screamy music. For some folk… uh? Just gotta scream. *shrug*
The Falling Down sequel should be you, also played by Douglas, dutifully describing the whys and hows of food marketing photography, its purpose and reasoning, to explain to viewers how stupid it is for someone to froth and get so worked up over the food not matching the pictures. THEN!, ya should detail why breakfast changing to lunch isn’t a scheme to harm this one man, but a pre-existing rotation structure so lunch can be properly prepped by half-past.
Perhaps this was a reflective film, inviting the viewer to compare their own petty trifles to the ones D-Fens faced, almost congratulating them for NOT destroying everything like he did. Perchance to dream, as well.
Congratulations, you’ve attained the bare minimum for a member of a larger society?
I think the pop cultural distortion of the film costs it dearly. As a drama about a broken man clearly unravelled as an ever-advancing threat to his ex-wife and child, it would work. But it was sold as some sort of statement on society at large, at which it fails.
The campaign initially positioned the film as a “popcorn-friendly” fantasy where the protagonist takes out “trash,” a strategy that led many viewers to identify with Douglas’s character as a hero rather than a villain. This marketing angle exploited the early 1990s cultural climate, capitalizing on post-Reagan era grievances and the recent 1992 L.A. riots to frame the story as a reaction to urban decay and corporate neglect.
However, this marketing approach resulted in significant polarization and backlash, as many critics and minority groups perceived the film as endorsing racism and violence rather than critiquing the protagonist’s descent into psychosis. The disconnect between the “take-no-sh” vigilante hype** and the film’s actual bleak, tragic tone contributed to its reputation as one of the most misunderstood movies of its era.
You are correct in your assessment.
But, since I was largely immune to marketing at the time, I watched the movie as a study in a man living in quiet desperation who comes unraveled and self-destructs.
An early example of woke rearing its ugly head.
It wasn’t woke.
The movie explains itself at the end. Main Character says “I’m the bad guy?” And the answer is yes, you’re the bad guy.
I expect the director and the marketing arm of the studio had different views of how the movie should be presented to the audience. The director clearly didn’t win.
“Congratulations, you’ve attained the bare minimum for a member of a larger society?”
Yes, in the nihilistic feel of the film, the character is doing the things the viewer would like to do themselves. Escapism. Early 90s LA was in bad shape. (It always is, further helping my point.) See also: Office Space being a laugh for everyone stuck in TPS roles, fantasizing how they’d also like to burn it down. And take the fucking printer with ’em while they’re at it.
Right, the movie wasn’t.
Some of its critics were.
I think you guys are missing the point; as I explain below, the brilliance of the film, IMO, is what the film shows the viewer about themselves. He represents the evil and darkness that resides within all of us and could so easily come out if we’re not vigilant.
This is a movie we (spouse+me) really like, but it is emotionally difficult for me to rewatch. Michael D’s performance is great and I genuinely feel sorry for the escalating challenges and forced estrangement from his children.
As others have said – I never saw the marketing on this and originally watched it long after release so no influence on that front.
#meneither
Though I did see it on tape soon after. And bought the Front Line Assembly album which surprised me with a bunch of samples pulled from the movie soon after that.
I’m not sure if I have ever seen this one from beginning to end. I wonder if it’s available (to me).
I’m willing to give it a watch with low expectations. Just like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Remember when wh had all day fast food breakfast and 24hr Walmarts?
We had it all.
I almost had a few Falling Down moments in 2000
broken man clearly unravelled as an ever-advancing threat to his ex-wife and child
Doesn’t sound very stoic.
The falling-apart car makes me think of financial hardships, because the AC and the window don’t just break at the same time.
Not familiar with 80s GM products?
I am so fucking sick of these goddam whiny abortion ads.
You should petition the FCC so we can ban abortion ads in the third commercial break. Then, watch as all the pro-abortion crew comes out demanding we keep abortion ads not only for the third, but also the second and first, just WHENEVER they wanna air ’em.
Poor judgement
New Bedford City Councilor Shawn Oliver suspended his campaign for Lieutenant Governor just hours after he was arrested Sunday morning on charges of driving under the influence of liquor, he announced.
Oliver, 42, was previously running alongside businessman Mike Minogue, who is challenging incumbent Gov. Maura Healey in the Massachusetts gubernatorial race.
“After careful reflection, I have made the decision to suspend my campaign for Lieutenant Governor,” Oliver wrote. “This election is too important to be overshadowed by personal matters. I want to sincerely thank everyone who has supported me throughout this journey and ask that my family’s privacy be respected during this difficult time.”
According to the New Bedford Police Department, officers arrived at 448 Dartmouth St. at 11:40 p.m. Saturday after receiving a report of a crash involving a car that overturned after hitting several other parked vehicles.
But, but, how would he be able to use campaign funds for his legal defense if there is no campaign?
The last five minuets of the movie was not good.
I’ve seen this movie multiple times and I can say that it is objectively good. Those who disagree are incorrect, brain damaged or both. It is art and could not be made today because it’s a movie with real courage.
Moar gym whores.
https://archive.is/BY71S
NSFW.
I question your judgement.
To elaborate a bit more, kinnath nails it in that Michael Douglas’ character is *not* the hero. The brilliance of the movie is the fact that he is so relatable and that we see parts of ourselves in him throughout the whole movie. The fact that he can so easily be seen as the hero is what makes it cinematically amazing. He is our shadow. He is our own capacity for evil being let loose. Evil is, indeed, banal. It looks like losing patience with the world in rush hour traffic after having been laid off and divorced. These things happen to millions of people all the time so routinely that the fantasies of losing it are ubiquitous. However, a hero doesn’t lose it, he buckles down and salvages some joy from his life and rebuilds. But we are all one bad day away from facing the choice between becoming a villain or not.
Yeah my favorite scene is the bum begging for a sandwich who obviously doesn’t need one.
I’ve been in that exact situation before, only D-FENS does what I only imagine doing in my head. But he’s not a “hero”, just an asshole.
I’ve been at a conference all weekend. Anything interesting happen in France?
Some stuff burned.