Michael Douglas has repeated stated in interviews that 'Falling Down' is, personally, his favorite movie. He put ALL of himself into it and he considers it his best work
He definitely convinced me that didn't hold back in this movie. What an amazing character and interesting story as well. Hollywood seldom ever tells these types of stories anymore.
It's interesting how Robert Duvall and Michael Douglas character basically experience the same life (loss of having your daughter, dealing with shitty people) but Robert Duvall's character is able to stay positive and retain a grasp on his mental health, while Michael Douglas goes into a complete free fall of darkness.
I see it as how the people around you will affect you when you are vulnerable. Duvall’s character has people who care about and support him, meanwhile Douglas you see from the mother and wife an attempt to distance and isolate him instead of helping or supporting him which is ultimately what lead to his downfall of mind. (His stresses are ignored and invalidated by his wife leading to his frustration and outbursts.)
@@jackmeowmeowmeow2177 Well we dont really know the whole back story of Douglas's family life other then the video tapes that were shown. He seemed to be very threatening towards his wife and kid....why would they want him around? He clearly had anger issues. Also Duvall didnt have people around him who cared about him other then his partner....the rest were idiot cops and criminals he had to deal with.
@@dre3k78 idiot cops who still went out of their way to involve him with everyone, even if it was usually on the butt end of a joke like the desk prank, a wife who even though she was difficult, understood and respected him (shown near the end) it also helps that Duvall’s character is still employed and has that stability and purpose as a cop. All we see from the people around D-fens was people saying how angry and horrible he was. They gave up on him or ignored his problems, then when he lashed out they blamed him even more and isolated him from likely the person who kept him together, his daughter, who loved him despite his troubles (ending scenes) we only really understand one perspective, the mother who clearly was disconnected from him prior to his snapping. (Videos show them arguing and her pouring fuel on the fire: “you’re scaring her!” When he was just loud a bit, what scared the daughter was the parents fighting for seemingly no reason, not d-fens being mad.) In D-fens story, no body is the good guy really, its a shattered family due to financial and social stresses. Made evident by what he shares in the end, he got lost his job and purpose, his greatest skill of creating missiles is basically pointless if no one will hire him, his wife blames him and doesn’t support or try to help him in any way, his mother is equally as useless in terms of helping his mental health.
@@alexanderpavlovic8370 He is still her father and she loves him but she is barely old enough to fully understand what has been going on in their parent's relationship.
With William Foster he immerses himself into that role so much you forget it's Micheal Douglas. I don't think he achieved that in any other movie he did.
@@Slosher52 I've noticed both in watching my parents and myself as I get older it's like we (humans) just get more intolerant of things that are 'different' than what we expect - we just start becoming unadaptable and rigid. Like our brains are getting solidified.
That's when you start to make changes in your life and routines to save your sanity. There's no reason to suffer - tweak your life/career/habits to avoid stressors as much as possible. Life's too short not to be happy. If there's a will, there's a way!
In 1993 when this movie came out and I just moved to Los Angeles, I couldn't relate to this guy at all. 30 years later, I feel so much empathy for this man it's scary. Great movie. Great performance. *** I want to strongly recommend the 1997 movie BREAKDOWN with Kurt Russell. An excellent action/thriller. ***
I saw this movie when I was in my late teens and thought he was cool and didn't take shit from anyone. Now looking at this review I realized he's a shitty person. 🤷
Ah this was reportedly Michael Douglas’s favorite acting gig. This movie has a lot to say. Both Douglas’s character and Prendergast have been compared as being kind of put upon in life, but Prendergast chooses to role with it in a healthier way than Foster who kind of loses his ever loving mind in the process. He definitely has anger issues, but we’re kind of strangely with him up until a certain point. That point tends to vary from each individual viewer:)
The movie is a fascinating character study of narcissism: Michael Douglas never understands that anything he does is wrong because, in his mind, he has justifications for everything in which he's always the victim and the world is treating him unfairly. Terrorizing your wife, violating court orders, leaving your car in the road, to a narcissist it's all justified if you had a bad day
The actor who owns the surplus store , was also in the movie " Apocalypse Now ' with Robert Duval , Marlon Brando , Martin Sheen , Dennis Hopper Laurence Fishburn.
@@philmakris8507 He passed away earlier this year. He earned an Oscar nomination in the rock & roll drama, "The Rose", with Bette Milder. His second wife was actress Marilu Henner ("Taxi", "Evening Shade").
"Uh oh, Country Club, these people might deserve it too" 😂 Falling Down is about what many of us think, but do not act on because "we" are sane and civil.
Society has a tendency of pushing someone to the edge and beyond. He was not fit to be a husband and full time father, but taking his daughter away 100%, what else did they expect this guy to do once he lost his job? The point is, even the least deserving people need some hope, some reason to try and do better. There are those people who do slip throw the cracks, and stomping on them while they are down is not the answer. I mean his daughter was happy to see her daddy, so he never hurt her, so what would have been wrong to allow some form of visitation?
I always felt like this movie was the inspiration for “Breaking Bad “. There are SO many parallels between them that don’t seem to be coincidences to me, especially the main character’s descent into what he thinks is justifiable evil.
It's very much a zeitgeist movie about 90's America from the pov of a person who was born during the post war golden era and whose dreams of a prospering America has been subsequently beaten down by corporatism, consumerism, multiculturalism etc and who is now questioning whether all those sacrifices he made were worth it. He believes that he has done everything right - served his country, worked all his life, payed his taxes etc and now he is unemployed and living with his mother. He doesn't know what went wrong in his life and after all this time snaps. It's a great character study and Michael Douglas plays him beautifully. The movie never really revels in itself either, never glorifies his actions. There is never a sense of cathartic release when he does something, it just gets more and more violent, depressing and dark. The dream of breaking the wheel and lashing out at society might seem nice in your head but in reality it is not some exhilarating action movie with witty one liners and whatnot but just mindless brutality that pulls you deeper and deeper beneath the surface of insanity. Phenomenal movie all around.
The people who don't sympathize with him AND the people who do sympathize with him both worry me. And yes, I recognize that contradiction. People worry me.
Yup I think if this movie has a message it’s that people are mostly awful. He’s awful, everyone he meets is awful, most of the cops are awful and they’re all being awful to each other.
@@derekdecker555 YUP. We empathize with him in the beginning because we've all been frustrated by similar things. But he's also an unreliable narrator and you realize he's not a victim of society. He's the cause of his own victimization and he's estranged from his family for a very good reason. It's weird that people are saying he's a victim about this character and comparing him to the Joker. They're both clearly sociopaths. If anything, they're victims of the lack of mental health services we have and are not sympathetic in any way outside of that, at least to me. Nobody but themselves caused them to snap. We just didn't do enough to prevent that.
I sympathize with him about being screwed over by his job, I don't for anything else he does. He is just entitled, and was to up his own ass to see he was being lied to.
Michael Douglas won an Oscar for best actor in Wall Street, he wasn’t even nominated for this movie and to me it’s a better role. In fact, I think it’s his greatest role ever.
If you're looking for a "Guy Is Fed Up With Society and Grabs a Gun" movie that is slightly more uplifting (in a satirical way), check out "God Bless America" starring Joel Murray (Bill's brother) and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait. It's basically the exact cross between Office Space and Falling Down.
Many never mention Barbara Hershey. She is one of the most underrated actress in the business and deserves more recognition than she's got over the year.
Because it not that great of a movie, just overrated. While there are good actors in it, and they give fairly good performances, the overall movie is mediocre at best, yet too many peoiple treat it as some icoic film, and it's just not.
Ooh or "War of the Roses" another one in the "Be careful where you stick your dick" category although less of the "She may be crazy" type and more of the "You may make each other crazy" type. He and Kathleen Turner had crazy good on screen chemistry. That pretty much carried their movie "Romancing the Stone"
(1) Falling Down is one of my favorite movies! I missed watching it at the cinema but had it on VHS. (2) Rachel Ticotin who played Sandra was the female corrections officer in Con Air & Melina in the original Total Recall (3) I work as an over the road truck driver & I will get on the cb radio to say clear a path I'm going home. (4) I think many of the scenarios were portrayed quite accurately. Law enforcement used to downplay domestic violence cases until someone was badly hurt or killed.
Someone already commented about Det. Sandra's actress, Rachel Ticotin. But you may have also recognized Michael Douglas' mother, Lois Smith, she is in several other known movies like Minority Report or Twister.
I remember seeing this movie as a kid when it first came out and being BLOWN AWAY!!! It is dark, and sad, and lonely and FUNNY... It made me appreciate the existential meloncholy of getting old as a teen.
Another awesome Reaction! Bookend this with "Romancing The Stone" and you have a measure of Michael Douglas' acting range. Another very good example of Douglas' work is "Black Rain".
Oh and by the way, speaking of how this is a really dark movie: Prendergast actually alludes to the possibility his wife might have suffocated/murdered their daughter. So yeah, pretty dark.
Ah, back when Joel Schumacher was thought of as a very good director, and not just the man who made Batman & Robin. Another good Schumacher film, that I don't believe I've ever seen a reaction to, is The Client (1994), you may want to add it to some thriller poll at some point.
It's troubling that so many people think Michael Douglas is a hero. The movie is a character study of narcissism: Douglas never understands that anything he does is wrong because, in his mind, he has justifications for everything in which he's always the victim and the world is treating him unfairly. Terrorizing your wife, violating court orders, leaving your car in the road, to a narcissist it's all justified if you had a bad day. The exact archetype of the guy who takes out his frustrations by beating his wife and kicking his dog.
What I really enjoy about Falling Down is how D-FENS starts as the protagonist and slowly becomes the antagonist (stalking his wife, destroying public works, terrorizing the burger joint). I do think a lot of people miss the point that Douglas is the villain though 😬
He is and also isn't, what he's like with his wife is terrible. Not enough is made of the pictures in his mother's house, purple heart award ex military dealing with unresolved PTSD, cast aside by his defence job,his wife the degradation of society and unable to cope with the changing world around him. He's by no means the hero but very relatable in many ways. In fact Prentergast and D-Fens wife are possibly the only real good people in the whole movie as apart from the bystanders.
@@BulldogMack700rs probably because those pictures and the plaque were most likely his mother’s shrine to his father, her husband. Movie is set in 1992 and Foster’s character is around 40. He’s an ex-engineer so it’s most likely he was in college during Vietnam, but his dad served. It’s fashionable to bandy about PTSD, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.
@@bobcobb3654 you're probably correct however i never mentioned Vietnam there was a bunch of actions in between Vietnam and the first Gulf war everyone seems to forget, Panama, Grenada etc
This movie was also the inspiration for JOKER 2019, where one particular bad day turns a person psychotic, where that person gets sick and tired of all the shit he has put up with for far too long.
Joker was a pretty blatant rip-off of Taxi Driver and King of Comedy. And the character was mentally ill the whole time, it wasn’t a “one bad day and snap” story.
When you pay close attention, you can see where much of his baggage comes from and where he's been going every day. When Pendergast goes to meet Foster’s Mother, there’s two frames on the wall, one with a collage of Army unit photos and one with a Purple Heart citation bearing his name. Also, he’s been job hunting, you can tell by his newspaper, the one he uses to plug up his shoe, he’s drawn circles all over the personal ads.
You should see The Game 1997 with Michael Douglas . It is one of the best movies ever made. It is a movie you can not recreate the first time you see it. Other great Michael Douglas movies are Disclosure, Perfect Murder and Don't Say A Word.
This movie is really a product of and a reflection of the time when it was shot. There were a lot of vocal angry people in the U.S. back then; here’s some context… As several comments pointed out, filming was impacted by the L.A. Riots. AIDS became the number one cause of death for U.S. men age 25-44 in 1992. It’s also worth noting that this film landed after an extended period of manufacturing jobs shifting overseas. The movie was also produced right after the early ‘90s recession, which increased financial strains for many. The choice of profession for the main character was hardly arbitrary; the military was being reduced sharply at the time. Despite the Gulf War, which delayed some planned cutbacks, it was seen as the beginning of a more peaceful era as a result of the fall of the Soviet Union. Incentives were offered early to those nearing retirement who were willing to seek early retirement, but many in the military were unceremoniously dumped in a recession (or just after a one), during military spending cuts, so military contractor jobs were hard to find and the general job market was poor. So while the Gulf War had temporarily united the country during a brief period of national pride, that quickly faded with economic pressures rising. Pop culture reflected this tense period with the rise of grunge and alt rock (practically rendering hair bands and upbeat wildly dressed dancing rappers [MC🔨] obsolete overnight), neon/oversized fashions were replaced with heroin chic models drowning in subdued colored flannels, and films with dissatisfied Gen X adult casts/plots took the place of the exuberant teen John Hughes movies of the ‘80s. It wouldn’t be until the mid to late nineties that the tech industry would take off. Then the dot com boom supercharged the economy and led to the rise of peppy boy & girl bands, hip hop couture bling and colorful clothes, and lots of blockbusters with victorious heroes staving off disasters (reflecting the more upbeat feel of an improving economy). So, this movie really nailed the angry, bleak, dark current that was flowing through many segments of the U.S. during the early nineties.
TBR - There is a little known gem of a movie starring Michael Douglas & Albert Brooks from 2003 called “The In-Laws”. It’s a hilarious action comedy with some surprising stars in it. I don’t want to give anything away but in my opinion I think you would both love it. It’s a reaction virgin - no one has done it yet. Would love to see your smiling faces react to it. 🙏🏻
Did you catch the title “Falling Down” is a reference to “London Bridge is falling down…my fair lady?” It’s funny to think about those lyrics and how they correlate to the plot of the movie. Bill’s life is falling down. And all of the ladies in the movie - his ex-wife, his daughter, his mother, Sondra - they were about the only fair people in the movie. The music box/snow globe that Bill bought for his daughter was playing “London Bridge Is Falling Down,” and James Newton Howard threw an Easter egg into his film score by interweaving the song into the film score at one or two points. Also, when the Nazi store owner turned against Bill, made him spread his legs and told him to put his hands behind his back, Bill said, “I can’t. I’ll fall down.”
This is one of the Originals " literally Me" movies before it became a thing , and also has the simplest yet deepest plot ever , it's about a man who lost his sh!t , and the rest of the story just tells itself
There were a few “pissed off middle age white guy loses his shit” movies in the 70s. Many got wrapped up in the vigilante subgenre, but one that’s really thematically close to this one is “Joe,” starring Peter Boyle.
I saw this in the theater when it was released in 1993, and as we were walking out after the movie ended my friend said the same thing about the movie being really dark.
Thank so much for reacting to this movie. Poor Michael Douglas just can't catch a break in this movie. He just runs into one jerk after another. I love the phone booth scene the best. This movie is on my top ten list of classic movies for sure.
I was about to suggest you guys to check on the series The Leftovers, but then you said you want to watch something light. So I'll suggest it again when you've had too much fun. :D
Haha I was laughing at the start when you two were talking about Office Space and needing just an entertaining movie after all the recent serious reactions 😅😂
I saw this movie when I was going through a nasty divorce. When I put a framed Falling Down poster in my office, it sure got my coworkers’ attention. And, no…I didn’t snap like the movie character.
Having rewatched this a couple of years ago for the first time in 20 years, it’s disturbing that anyone finds Michael Douglas’s character relatable. The entire story is a man reacting to frustrations that happen while he is on his way to at least confront and at worst harm his ex and/or his child. He doesn’t have change to call his ex (even though she says the law told him not to), so he harasses a Korean grocer and tears up his merchandise. He’s too late for breakfast at a fast food joint, so he pulls a gun and threatens the staff (teenagers and minorities, of course). He’s mad that the road to his ex’s house is being worked on, even though it wasn’t being worked on the day before (How does he know that?), so he fires a f’n rocket launcher, endangering who knows how many people. The whole movie he is a psychopath. We’re watching a stalker thriller through the stalker’s point of view. Like Duvall’s character told him “Guys like you always say you don’t know what you’re going to do until you do it.”
@@masterelmstreet5886victim of what? He’s not in his car going to work. He’s trying to get to his ex’s house, even though she took out a restraining order against him. Every subsequent action in the film is predicated on that fact. He says “You know, she doesn’t want me at the birthday party. I don’t like it, but it’s better than getting arrested, so I’ll just send the kid a card and call it a day,” the events of the movie don’t happen.
This movie works on several levels, but my favorite is the collision course William and Prendergast are on throughout the film. One is positive, the other negative; when they meet, they're bound to cancel each other out. I think a lot of people assume Prendergast is gonna bite it when they get into this movie. But he doesn't, because he's a damn good cop. His good is stronger than William's evil, and he wins the day because of it. Great stuff.
Mental health is no joke...He thought he was the "good guy" who is completely rational...You see most things from his point of view...I feel compassion for him
such an underrated gem of a movie and a great performance from michael douglas. i hope you guys will check out the other michael douglas gem from the 1990s, The Game (1997).
This is the channel I most looked forward to the reaction to this. This shows my age but I saw this opening night when I was in 7th grade and saw it at least 2 more times that month. It had the unfortunate distinction of opening the same day of the first(and mostly forgotten) attack on the WTC. One horrible thing and one good thing that day,they have nothing else to do with each other I just can’t think of one without the other. Anyway you guys are awesome
Everyone always misses the fact that he has the squirt gun. When he was sitting on the couch watching the VCR tape of the birthday party, he had the squirt gun in his hand. This was a very dark movie, but even though you have to feel for the guy for everything going wrong in his life, I still don't understand his reasoning for wanting to commit suicide by cop. He hadn't worked on a month, so his company likely isn't paying for it anymore, nor does he have the funds to pay the monthly premiums.
Or that’s his justification. End of the day, he’s looking at 1 count of assault for the grocery store, dozens of counts of reckless endangerment for the burger joint, another assault/manslaughter charge for the golf course, a murder charge for the pawn shop, and assault on a public servant for shooting Duvall’s partner. He chose suicide by cop as opposed to life in prison.
It's been a long time since I've seen this movie, but I still remembered it pretty well. Nice to see again through you guys' eyes. BTW, I got a laugh when she originally saw it as Office Space gone dark, then noticed the first scene was just like office space first scene. lol
That IS Los Angeles, I know many of the places where they shot this movie. It isn't Los Angeles in the darkness portrayed. Great movie, great script, great acting
