Review: Falling Down

Tightly-wound, perspiring, wannabe everyman Michael Douglas (with uber-nerd glasses and the rest of Dilbert’s wardrobe) abandons his car in busy morning traffic on an insufferably hot L.A. day, and decides to head home on foot. Unfortunately, the setbacks he encounters in his quest to see his daughter, result in him boiling over. Armed with a cache of weaponry, he dispenses violent retribution upon anyone who happens to vaguely piss him off: Korean convenience store owner Michael Paul Chan, neo-Nazi gun nut Frederic Forrest (in a completely grotesque performance), gangsta thugs (whom he gets most of the weapons off), and anyone unlucky enough to be in the fast food restaurant that won’t serve him breakfast because it’s two minutes too late to serve breakfast. D-FENS (his license plate signature) is mad as hell, and he’s not gonna take it anymore.

 

Meanwhile, cop Robert Duvall is on his last day, much to the happiness of uber-nagging wife Tuesday Weld, but when he gets wind of what’s going on, well there’s no time for a retirement party. Barbara Hershey (waiting for someone to properly write her into the script) is Douglas’s worried wife- but is she worried for Douglas or her and her daughter if Douglas ever reaches them? The underrated Rachel Ticotin is Duvall’s partner, D.W. Moffett another a-hole cop, Raymond J. Barry his a-hole boss (a role that the character actor is much too good for), Lois Smith is Douglas’s mother, and Brent Hinkley and Deedee Pfeiffer are the fast food workers. The talented Vondie Curtis Hall is literally reduced to an Angry Black Man role.

 

Totally irresponsible 1993 Joel Schumacher (“The Lost Boys”, “Batman Forever”, “A Time to Kill”) film hit a nerve for some (sick) people, and was seen as biting satire by others, but they’re all wrong. This is a morally bankrupt (and borderline racially offensive- to put it charitably!) film that isn’t intentional comedy, it’s a totally overblown vigilante film with seemingly no point to it, a total mess on just about every level.

 

Douglas is, like the director, way overboard, and his caricatured work totally derails any possible merit there might be in examination the frustrations and out-of-control urban/racial violence in America in the early 90s (Besides, Spike Lee already covered a lot of this, hot temperature included, in his late 80s flick “Do the Right Thing”, an overrated film but superior to this turkey). If this is satire, it’s horribly botched, anyway, and at no point credible. Not only that, but at no point was I sure whether I was meant to sympathise with Douglas or not. His character’s behaviour seemed too extreme for me to be worthy of sympathy, and he was definitely racist (mocking Chan’s inability to enunciate words in English, never mind that some vowels and consonants are difficult for certain ethnicities to pronounce, they still need to speak good ‘American’! Uh-huh). And yet, at times it seemed like Schumacher wanted us to identify with this crackpot and his totally unacceptable behaviour (I could’ve perhaps understood his feelings but could never justify his actions for a second, this guy was just too off the charts to begin with and only got worse).

 

Duvall and Ticotin are nice and (comparatively) relaxed and low-key, but they can’t save this horrible, repulsive misfire, with gross, sweaty, close-up heavy camerawork by Andrzej Bartkowiak (a frequent collaborator with Sidney Lumet on films like “Prince of the City”, “The Verdict”, “Power”, and “Family Business”, who ended up a director himself), which is as ham-fisted as the ghastly direction.

 

Terribly overbaked screenplay by Ebbe Roe Smith (better known as a character actor in films like “The Big Easy”), there was just no need for this to be so over-the-top (Did we really need the rocket launcher? Really, Mr. Schumacher?), that is, if there was any need for it to exist in the first place. If this movie strikes a chord with you...then you are someone I never hope to meet. Please stay the hell away from me, or I shall be forced to call the authorities!

 

Rating: D+