Haha i remember when I was young and saw this and thought wjat was his problem . Over the years and thru the experiences, I think I've come across most of that man's experiences , almost all. Crazy. Apart from the fact that he's having chaotic breakdowns even before this which kinda shoves under the rug , the truth in this movie , apart from this bit I do relate to him a lot
@@dutube99 Well most people who support Trump do it because its basically a way to show the established political college that we the people don't give a shit no more . We will elect the extreme personality like Trump because we would rather take a chance to see the sudden change than wait for the career politicians to fulfill their over longing promises . Even the main character of the "Falling Down" William perfectly portrays that rage on the established order , he is not a nazi , nor is he a left-wing anarchist . He is a person who is tired to see things slowly change the society and the economical system for the worse , so he takes an extreme action cause there is basically no other way in his mind . And looking at the inflation , world conflicts , woke meltdown and etc . Maybe THERE IS no other way....
It's a more realistic story of a marginalized man going mad than is Joaquin Phoenix's "The Joker". Michael Douglas' "Bill D-Fens Foster" is better acting, or is it a better script.
The armchair queer surmises that it is actually the average man's fault. The average man, the cis, heterosexual misogynist is basically to blame for his own falling down, he is... the bad guy. "He's hypersensitive to societal changes around him".. This is their cliffnote version of the entire movie. It was same synopsis since the 90s when it had come out and it was this strain, much like RU-vid and most social media, the predominant narrative you hear. They extropolated nothing more. Remember that.
@@temporarybackup5077Bi here. Don't use your queerness as an excuse to remove yourself from this. You're making up some fantasy of a zero-proof "if the world was run by queers, we'd be better" for a cheap dunk on a society built by people of multiple backgrounds. It doesn't make sense to say "You SWM did this, even though you also hate this. You made your bed that other people made for you, lie in it." (I also need to add this disclaimer because I know how your types work; I, and the movie, are criticizing the (then and now) state of society. This society isn't comprised of 100% straight white males and you know that. But the reason I just mentioned isn't the reason why I, nor the film, are criticizing society, so don't pull that card.) Your statement is a nothingburger and you should be ashamed of using your queerness as a shield to the world. You reek of Somerton.
@@temporarybackup5077 “Armchair Queer” yeah i can tell from that name and this that im going to heavily disagree and feel like vomiting. I will not deny that man has made some mistakes in societal norms but it also shouldn’t mean that men should emasculate themselves while modern society is pushing the same men that go to war and helped built society to the way side or wanting men to be more submissive.
A dollar for the chips and $3.99 for irresponsible and dishonest monetary and budget policies stretching back to the 1960s. You're paying for shit people wanted the government to provide but didn't want to pay the bill for.
To keep the price the same they had to decrease the serving size, okay fair enough, inflation is awful. But they cross the line when they gaslight their own customers and tell them they're just IMAGINING the candies were bigger (yes, they did that).
There is a huge amount of subtlety and symbolism that gets missed with this movie, like the shot with the American flags on the floor, I'm glad you spotted that. Its a subtle way of expressing that D-Fens is at war with America itself, or how they show a panning city skyline background while he is sitting on the cement block, like if he is being surrounded by society and then he raises his shoe with the hole to show how society is literally eating away at his sole. There is also the blue lighting during the scene when he is watching the home video, blue could be a calming color or a symbol of good times.
Plus the people who D-Fens combats are symbolic: the first shopkeeper is of Korean descent, the gangsters are of Mexican descent, and the other shopkeeper is a neo-Nazi. All represent places or groups America went to war with.
that movie was prophetic. it showed what happens when policy is done only for efficiency and no other values. when quaterly profits are the only measure of success. when loyalty to your employer means nothing. when there is no more community just a market.
One little detail I always loved is that when hes hiding by the pool with the caretakers family, he takes the little girls hand on instinct as they all hide. A moment later he looks down and sees her hand is bloody and he panics, terrified that he'd hurt the girl inadvertently. As he's apologizing profusely and he looks quite shaken that he'd hurt this small, innocent child, even accidentally, the father of the girl points out that Bill had a cut on his hand from earlier and that it was Bill's blood, not his daughter's. His terror at thinking he'd hurt the girl, and his subsequent relief after learning he HADN'T injured her shows that deep in himself, he was not a characteristically evil man. He can be pushed to do evil things, and caused many people to suffer under his actions, but he doesn't hurt people just to do it, or get some sick thrill at causing death and injury. I believe he quickly became addicted to the feeling of finally being the one in power and control after the Korean store incident, and some cathartic satisfaction in disrupting and punishing this world he no longer felt a part of and that had (in his mind, at least) persecuted him unjustly for decades, but never desired the harm of innocents. The problem was that his latent mental problems and the crippling stress he felt day after day made him feel qualified in passing judgement on those he would 'punish' and deciding himself who was innocent. I choose to see Bill as a deeply flawed man, who violently pushed back again those pushing him off of the edge of his sanity, but he was STILL a man that was horrified at the thought he'd accidentally hurt a child. I find things much more interesting when the lines of "good" and "evil" are blurred (as they are in life...).
@@markmathisen3908 You are welcome. I was in a hurry when I posted earlier. I just wanted to say, your comments were very astute and very insightful. You provided such a well-reasoned post. I think many people would have missed the significance of that scene in the film. But you made a very articulate, meaningful statement about that powerful moment in the movie. You have a great eye. And a perceptive mind.
This movie has done everything right. A perfect example of how you end up when people make things more and more hard for you to deal with, no matter how patient you try to be. Insanely relateable.
@@chasehedges6775 it's only the lucky ones that get to smile, unlike some people who never get what they want. Or in my case, i used to have it all, and then everything i had became crap, one after the other.
Many of us really are just one bad twist of fate away from becoming Bill. A divorce, layoff, medical emergency, bad family incident, friend betrayal, etc.
Exactly. And similar to how some people view homeless people, “they must have done something to deserve their situation “ type of thinking. Also the “well good thing that could never happen to me…right?” We are all moving parts in this messed up machine, if you malfunction oh well there’s another to replace.
@@Zak-fi1zi Being career or job focused has always been puzzling to me. The relationships and people I value the most are the people who value me or hold me in high esteem. These would be my wife, family and friends. When I work I do want to do a good job but I have no allusions to myself that anyone cares about me or I am anything different than a replaceable cog in the machine. I can be fired at any time for any reason. "Time and unexpected events overtake them all." - Ecclesiastes 9:11
I saw it in the theater when it came out and was always reticent in saying that I liked it, given that liking it was besides the point. The message was heavy and I have been thinking about it ever since. It is especially relevant today. Thanks for this breakdown.
Even Michael Douglas will agree when I say that this was some of his best work ever. The film's success is pretty much the single handedly responsibility of Michael Douglas. It was supposed to be a lower budget movie with a younger lesser known actor as the lead. Once Michael Douglas expressed interest by saying it was the best script he ever read, the film's budget increased by a lot and we were able to get the movie we eventually saw. Although it was considered very risky by 1993 standards even after the L.A. riots, it has become a well identified movie that has aged well with the times. A total masterpiece 👍
Great movie. It had a story to tell. No superhero’s, and no good guys win at the end. We need more movies that are not scared of showing how the world is and not what you wish it was. Nice video!
I like how each time he lashes out, they make it relatable but make it clear hes in the wrong at the same time. It's like "Yeah, it's unfair...but this isn't the answer."
It's the entire point. Joel Schumacher made it incredibly clear that while these outbursts may be individually cathartic, they are detrimental to larger society and contribute nothing to actually addressing the issues he laments - not even a mention on the news, a repeating theme throughout the film.@@Morbutt
@@JDefends no it's not "incredibly clear" as getting the issue resolved isn't even the point in the first place. Nobody ever said pulling a gun at a burger joint because they stopped serving breakfast 3 minutes ago was a viable solution. The end result when someone has had more than they can take, the outburst, was the point.
Saw this one on the big screen when it came out. It was 33 degrees Celsius outside, like in the movie, but the cinema was nicely cooled. I remember the heat hitting me like a sledge hammer when I stepped out after the screening. One of my most favorite films as it predicted the shape of things to come. In German, they would call D-Fense a "Wutbürger" theses days, kind of a "raging citizen". They only do that because they don't want to bother with the reasons why so many people have lost faith in politicians, the markets and institutions as a whole. One reason for that - on of the main reasons - is the poor handling of the aftermath of the 2008 subprime crisis. Jesus, the EU completely screwed it up. First they thought that Europe would not be concerned by the crisis, and then they threw billions at their banks. The departure of the UK from the EU was largely due to the dire consequences of the moronic decisions made by the EU after 2009. Having said that, this movie will stand the test of time. I don't care that Joel screwed up Batman. This movie proves that he was a world-class director! ♥
You want to harass your ex, pull a gun on burger store employees and then act like youre the victim? Honestly, that makes me sad. I hope you reach out to someone and get some help. you don't wanna be that guy.
The point of the story is not about the ex .... The overarching story is about the common working man who do the thankless grunt work for everyday people . We fix the sinks for people , we go into sewers and take the shit out, we make your food , we build your houses , we provide your data services. It's like fight club .... We are the unseen cogs that keep society moving "don't fuck with us" All it takes is one bad day...
5:25 You are being disingenuous in this assumption of Bills character and using this scene without also showing what he does immediately after it. Once bill notices blood on the little girls hand, he immediately drops to his knees in worry because he thinks he's hurt her in some way, he also wasn't threatening her or her family in that scene, he just happened to have his guns with him. Throughout the film we are presented with two sides of "D-fens". The first is what every critic of this film seems to only be able to see, the guy with a gun who is mad at society for no other reason than the fact he is angry at his own misfortune. The second, is a man who has lost everything he cares about after giving everything to those things he loved. The military sent him home when he got wounded, the government fired him when they no longer needed him, the justice system used him as a way to "make an example" and denied him custody and issued a restraining order against him over his only daughter, after his wife left him even though she knew he wouldn't hurt either of them (she admits this in the scene where she speaks with the police). His fits of anger before the movie starts as seen in the family videos, are likely an effect brought on by some untreated PTSD, something almost no one ever mentions. The entire film all he wants to do is visit his daughter for her birthday. Basically every event that happens is due to D-fens being tired of society's BS and actually trying to make society admit that its flawed to the core and no longer letting it push him around. Also "everyone he suspects to be part of the system becomes a target" He kills a total of two people in the film, and both are in self defence. This is just another analysis that paints Bill Foster as the villain who is responsible for all of his own suffering, while defending the unjust hand he's been dealt in life. He is representative of the working man who does everything he is told from day one and is given nothing for it but suffering and derision. Which is why videos like this want people to think Bill is the bad guy here, and not society which pushed and pushed until he had enough and wasn't gonna take it anymore. Bill is a hero, but he's the hero of the people who aren't allowed to have them.
he is a villan, he literally threatens, at gun point, an entire restaurant of people because "the burger doesn't look like it does on the photo." Yea, maybe he's "standing up for his rights as a consumer" but he' also trampling the rights of every body else there. and for what? a burger? Also, as a father myself, no some strange man wielding a gun around my child, isn't a "good" guy because he's concerned he might have hurt her. He's a clearly deranged man wielding a gun around my family. He is not at all a hero and to think he is, misses the point of the film.
@@iwritechecksatthegrocerystore He didn't threaten anyone in the whammy burger, not directly anyway and by the end of the scene you can see a lot of the people inside the restaurant share his opinion. It also wasn't about a burger, it was about petty time restrictions disallowing a paying customer the right to purchase a product (that was already made and sitting on a hot plate), ontop of the managers attitude towards him. if you are a father, than you should feel empathy for Bills situation, seeing as he lost custody to his only child and is quite literally at the end of his rope in life with nothing left. He has no job, no family, no meaning anymore, and society turns around and says its all his own fault? If you really think he's nothing more than a deranged man with a gun, than you are the exact kind of person who is criticized in this film for your apathetic view on people who are pushed to their limits and expected to just cope with the stressors of society.
@@a_loyal_kiwi88 If he’s at the end of his rope in life then he should either fix himself or take himself out. Not stalk his ex wife, terrorize his family, threaten a police officer with a gun… What’s really funny/ironic to me is that he thinks he has nothing and in fact he has a lot. He has a child. Granted the situation might not be ideal. And he might feel like he’s gotten the bad end of the custody stick, but that doesn’t mean you just give up. What kind of message is that to send a child? I don’t think he’s a deranged guy with a gun. I think he just reacts badly. I don’t mind him defending himself against the gang guys, and when he tells that golfer “now you’re going to die wearing those stupid pants” 😂. I really enjoyed this movie when I first saw it 20+ years ago, I just think that now all these years later a lot of it has shifted so its more… it’s still a good movie. I mean hell we’re talking about it. It’s just there’s a lot more to unpack and think about. Which I guess is what a good movie should do right? And while I don’t agree with a lot of what he does, and I don’t think he’s a hero, I do understand the feeling of utter fucking frustration that comes with trying to do what you think is right, failing and feeling angry about it. I guess what I don’t like about this movie is that 9/10 comments seem to be “yea!! He’s standing up for all of us!!” And in truth he isn’t, because apart from the golf guy he doesn’t do act at all against people who actually may have contributed to his economical issues, and except for a small moment where he asks if he’s the bad guy doesn’t reflect on his own actions at all. Anywho, thanks for the feedback. It’s nice to be able to discuss films with another movie fan. I appreciate hearing your point of view.
OK had to stop at 3:35. Where did Bill get the bat that he used to rollback prices? Oh yes, he was attacked with it by the store owner. Bill decided to go to his daughter's birthday party, peacefully and with malice toward none (well, until they added the extra scene with golfers in the later version of the movie to make his character less sympathetic). His intention the whole time was assertive as opposed to aggressive and (importantly) as opposed to passive. He only ever "waged war" in response to being attacked. "He was hypersensitive to societal changes that he would probably have ignored in times past." No, he was unwilling to passively submit to the societal expectation that he should put up with abuse. Many people will deny this and might point to the fast food scene. His most aggressive move was to pull out the gun when dealing with the cashier and the manager - but even so he never intended to fire the gun. He wanted breakfast and he was (yes) attacked by the cashier and the manager. This was proven after he took out the gun and was immediately handed breakfast - the cashier and the manager were shown to have been malicious liars. He's the bad guy for not WILLINGLY "falling down."
It's much more than a masterpiece. More than just one moral is included. It's a devastating painting of American's corporate culture and "policies". Douglas finds his weapons on the street, his frustration at Mc. Donald and his death in the ocean. But since then nothing has changed: "We still stop serving breakfast at eleven". Do you know the "customer is king"? Yeah, well ... not our policy. That even touches politics: Are the Americans hiring them by vote or are they hiring Americans by arrogance. He is not corrupted at all. Bill (Douglas) is a clear thinker and America refuses to think. All it shows is arrogance and unlawful acts by authorities - and nobody can touch them. That should not end like Bill, it must be attacked by the people. I will never forget this movie, and all others that show how criminal and corrupt corporate America can be. I grew up literally under a government owned railroad and saw the arrogant CROOKS visiting my business, giving orders and threats (Austria is not different - no nation is). Power creates arrogance and arrogance creates lawlessness. The second movie I will never forget is "Once upon a time in the West". Building a railroad and killing anybody in the way. Is it really that easy to become a businessman - just be following great ideas? Nope. Connections are much more important. That drove me into politics to "change" what's needed. I noticed it's the money that controls my party associates and when they reach the summit - murder she wrote. Always the same principals. We just saw it last Friday the 13th. Money and medals of honor govern their minds. I set foot in America, became a citizen waiting for my pension from Austria - and as expected - it never arrived. I knew I had to build enough to finance my senior life. Falling down was never a question for me. Punishing criminals and corruption was. Just one vote is insufficient. Greed is stronger. Weapons don't change it either - yet I hold on to a pamphlet calling me "terrorist". If you believe my former neighbor - and some did without evidence - be careful who you made a citizen and who you rejected. One of them could be falling down - the other could respond, because it killed his mother - my wife. Since her cause of death was never determined by the coroner - I guess I can confidently say - she died from broken heart syndrome. A few American citizens spreading rumors can do that. They live quite happy, but no longer here in Florida. Two brilliant actors (Douglas and Duvall) show America how easy any honest man can be painted as a villain. That's the moral of the story.
Although “Falling Down” could be set in any major U.S. city, screenwriter Ebbe Roe Smith says he wanted to write about Los Angeles as experienced by a man at the end of his rope because “to me, L.A. is the future of everywhere else in the United States. “Things that are happening here today will be happening everywhere else tomorrow,” says Roe. “In the film, the lead character (D-FENS, played by Michael Douglas) has to deal with a lot of L.A. issues--the rise of traffic and crime and gangs, the new tide of immigrants and the tensions that arise when neighborhoods bump into each other--that tomorrow will be the issues that other cities will be forced to deal with too.” Indeed, the city of Los Angeles--from the crumbling boardwalks of Venice to downtown’s graffitied decay--plays the part of a supporting character in the film, according to producer Timothy Harris. The first screenplay Roe has seen produced, “Falling Down” is being touted by its distributor, Warner Bros., as a socially relevant and timely slice of life in the tradition of 1979’s “The China Syndrome,” which opened soon after the Three Mile Island crisis. In this era of economic disarray, urban violence and rioting, the movie’s posters and TV advertisements play up the idea of the “city as an enemy,” where nothing seems to work the way it once did. In that way, is “Falling Down” a wake-up call to other cities? Smith thinks this one over, then answers, “I wouldn’t say it’s a wake-up call, it’s just an observation. Los Angeles is troubled, clearly, but at this point, I don’t know what solutions there are to be had. “To me,” he continues, “even though the movie deals with complicated urban issues, it really is just about one basic thing: The main character represents the old power structure of the U.S. that has now become archaic, and hopelessly lost. And that way, I guess you could say D-FENS is like Los Angeles. For both of them, it’s adjust-or-die time--that’s what the movie is about.”
This is a great film. This film does a great job at not being biased it tells the story from both sides of the coin especially in the grocery store, Does D-Fens have to terrorize the store clerk ? Of course not, but at the same time all the store clerk had to do was help him out by giving him change for one measly dollar and he would have been on his way and that one scene resonates on so many levels beyond cinema and into real life, how many conflicts happen everyday over misunderstandings of one another about how we believe things are supposed to be.
The lesson is, you are always given a choice. The bad one most of the time is the easy one. The Good one may seem lame or difficult most of time. Be like Prendegast.
In short, this movie did for movies what Breaking Bad did for tv shows. It’s not told to us explicitly who the hero is or who the villain is. We’re shown D-Fens and Detective Prendergast and their points of view through their experiences. But both have equally compelling motivations for doing what they do. Prendergast is merely doing his job in stopping who he sees as the bad guy while D-Fens sees society as the bad guys for constantly taking advantage of him and everyone else like him. Neither are wrong and Schumacher goes a long way through various events to illustrate both men are right in their own ways. The most brilliant movies don’t have black and white heroes or villains, they have real life people operating in shades of grey based on their own perception and experience. This movie is criminally underrated and probably both Michael Douglas’s best role and Joel Schumacher’s best directing.
I remember when I saw this film in the cinema for the first time - I was in Engineering Graduate School and remember thinking how did it all go so wrong? Here we are a little more than 30 years later and it’s only gotten worse for society as a whole. The history of humanity is riddled with endless collapses in society. I can only say to who ever is willing to listen - "we are not of this Kingdom, get your house in order - with God".
"Indeed, that's very true. This is how I see today's society myself. Our responsibility is to make it better. Just like Detective Prendergast, who knows that society will reject him, he accepts that the world is unfair, but decide to do everything in his ability to make it better. That's how one should be.
Absolutely adore this movie, and fantastic critique sir! It makes me so sad though that so many people either celebrate or demonize this movie for the wrong reasons. And don't get me started with people who politicize this film, and prop up Michael Douglas' character D-Fens as this martyr and right-wing folk hero. People who use D-Fens as this hyperpartisanized mascot totally miss the point of this movie. So as a result, it makes so glad that this review exists and finally analyzes and praises it for what it truly is.
This is 1 of my favorite movies. I can identify with the main character.I felt really bad for him. I know he did a bunch of bad things but I can understand the reasons why he did what he did.🤔
I felt the most powerful scene of the film was when Bill saw the black man protesting outside a corrupt savings and loan. The man was clean cut, also wearing a white shirt. To me, he represented what could have been right about America, but isn't. He was the new "not economically viable" person in America. He represented the death of the American dream. Not just for Bill, but for everyone.
The movie writes him off as a troubled psycho like 5 minutes in, I dont think the story is about him, I think its about the everyman, and the innane garbage theyre willing to fight over. The korean willing to fight a crazy man over 85 cents, the man cussing a woman because her car is temporarily blocking her, the manager refusing to compromise with a psycho over 5 minutes past the breakfast, the wife willing to leave her daughter fatherless over a small quarrel with Bill, the gang members willing to harass a man over a block of graffitied cement, and of course best of all, the two forgotten men who realise they are men with agency too late and who refuse to take reality as it is, inflation, changes in the police force, their family dynamic, etc. No one is a hero, everyone is stubborn, no one is willing to compromise until its too late.
The fault I find in your analysis and the lack of nuance in your simplification of how Bill and Prendergast are the bad guy and good guy who have similar ciscumstances and but deal with it differently. The biggest difference is that prendergast loses his child through cot death and Bill loses his daughter to a restraining order that the wife says the judge wanted to make an example of Bill though he had never been physically violent towards his wife or child. Bill’s daughter is still alive and he is isolated from her and as a father has no longer a purpose and it’s been taken from him by society and the law for no good reason. The law labelled him dangerous and a threat though he wasn’t. He then became what they labelled him. Take away a man’s family and he losses his job, he loses his purposes in life. That’s the injustice of the story. Bill is at fault cause he loses his anger about the injustice. The only innocent person that Bill physically hurts in the film is the Korean store owner. Bill’s journey throughout the film is to be reunited with his daughter for her birthday. It isn’t to harm her. Prendergast punches a work college for an insult about his wife. Get some perspective about who is right, wrong or nuance. Men don’t get sympathy in society and you missed the meaning of the film entirely because you wanted to paint the characters as black n white instead of analysing the nuance of the plight of Bill.
Thanks for making and posting this. There are probably not that many movies from that period which resonate with people today. Please consider doing a video on Die Hard, I've often thought that it had similarities to Falling Down. JM disenfranchised from his wife and children, desperate to make her realise what a mistake she has made. That underneath his grubby working-class vest is a superman, who can destroy all evil and the world around him to rescue her.
Yes, the tiresome lost valuables of the Hard working blues are just as how we are all used against one another. Both Men in this movie, does mirror how people are just used to get certain production values in their human born forms. But what will the blue collar, middle-class feel in the years to come ? Rage, sadness, deafness to how many of us, are in fact. Replaceable. And there is the ignorance of truth, faced by all generations.
There was a British novel, Mr. Philips by John Lanchester on this theme-a man who has lost his job but can’t tell his family so continues his normal routine. Lanchester got the idea from a detail of the Rachel Nickel Wimbledon Common murder case. Eliminating everyone on the Common that morning the police kept coming back to one siting-a man in a smart suit sitting on a bench. Completely innocent of the crime eventually a man came forward who had lost his job but couldn’t tell his wife and in the summer had continued to travel up to London and wander around the common all day.
Also the protester, who was all alone, said to Bill, "Remember Me". He was also saying, "Remember Me"? The American dream? The protests of the sixties were supposed to birth a new American dream. It was supposed to bring forth an America in which, if you worked hard and did the right things, you could be a homeowner and live the American dream no matter your skin color. And that dream has turned into a nightmare of corruption, greed, violence and selfishness.
You got it wrong. In the end Prendergas as well as Bill (D-fens) knew "Coming home and having things be like they were" would mean killing his wife and daughter, then himself. At this point he couldn't see any other way. Yes Bill, you are the bad guy. Awesome film, my top number 1.
This movie is a warning. If a man loses everything, what more can he lose? The real tragedy is that nobody understood what he was and therefore society couldn’t change for the better, even though he constantly makes a point that there should be change. The moral of the story is that while we may wish to act in a similar manner as the “protagonist” does, we should not. Rather we should be constructive and work to a solution that will bring substantial change. I.e. Don’t lose your head and remain reasonable! 😂
Its funny how if you changed the skin color of the main character, the narrative would change from spiteful victim to righetous fury. A sign of the times.
Yo this video is fucking amazing , i wanted to see analytics on this movie, but i stumbled upon some robot literally describing the movie. i think ive seen some more “analytics” from that channel and ofc hated all of them. In this vid i didnt skip , i actually had to pause and think from this guy’s point of view, amazing!
That movie came out in 1993. I visited Los Angeles last year and the perpetual traffic jams are reality, not fiction. They are as bad as what you see in the movies. It is not a pretty place to live in, even if you are rich. Your mansion is only a heartbeat away from a ghetto.
While he's not completely unsympathetic and not the worst villain in the movie, I think just everyone misses the point of his character. If he truly took the idea of doing what society tells us to do to heart, then he would have realized he was no better than his wife, the shopkeeper, fast food managers, or the rude golf guy, and that he is in fact responsible for the downfall of his marriage and losing custody of his child. He devalued society simply because of his personal misfortunes (which he was responsible for) while not seeing that he too was being a disruption to society, and the way he reacts is exactly why society exists in the first place. We are supposed to make the best of it and try to see the good in society instead of going against it, no matter how flawed it may be. Society has never been completely good or bad. To say the least, his mindset makes him a bit of an emotionally unstable sociopath.
Very well described! I completely agree with your analysis. Foster is not a hero by any means. "He is the villain and the victim". Part of what makes villainous characters so great is that they are often victims, and therefore sympathetic. Just look at Joaquin's Joker!
The movie did everything right until the end, when they obviously felt pressure to let the audience know Bill was a bad guy. They basically state, without evidence, that Bill was going to kill his family and daughter, when that was really the exact opposite motivation of him the entire movie. There was nothing that justified that supposition by Duvall's character and really came out of nowhere. If he just died because "society" found his actions wrong, that would have been way more consistent.
Mick Douglas wasn't always one of my "favourite" actors, I can watch his movies, he's not annoying or anything but never drew me in and said "look at me" after seeing this movie though he went up a notch in my book, would also like to add he will never top this role he was perfect for it.
Watched this in my early teens, he was my hero back then. Later I'm just terrifyed of becoming like him, loosing everything and lashing out in a typical "white american shooter" moment. Now I kinda pity him, how isolation was a greater shit than anything else. And how if he joined up with more people disgruntled, and take action against the objective stuff that is destroying everything, instead of abstractly lashing out, and with this basically letting isolation win
I've watched the film pretty much since it came out. When i originally saw it, when i was in high school, I saw it as push back on society and didn't pay much attention to Prendergast's story. Over the years I picked up on other things. One thing that many people overlook is the support (or lack there of) for men. Foster has no real support to help him with his struggles. His wife left him, no friends, his mother is scared of him. He has to deal with losing his job he probably worked for years. His wife left him and took their child and doesn't allow him to see her. There isn't much context available. Did they seek counseling or did she just decided to separate? Was his father abusive? There might be hints of this. Prendergast has people he can work out his troubles with, like his wife, partner, and other coworkers. I was thinking about making a review talking about if what happened in Falling Down could have been avoided. One thing that is universal, people can be really shitty to one another. Mr. Lee gouging his prices, the gang members and bum seeing him as an easy mark, the disrespect from the others at the police station, golfers thinking they are better than anyone else, and so forth. Watching people react to the movie, they make it a thing to point out that white people generalize other races. However, I like to point out that they are detaining every white guy with a white shirt and tie with a gym bag that who looks like nothing like Foster.
The reviewer would have you remain sheepish, and timid and accept every gross injustice with blind obedience. Obviously this reviewer has never experienced devastating, catastrophic tragedy in his soft-easy-life. Violence is wrong. And violence only makes things worse. But the reviewer fails to understand the horrific life some people are forced to live. The reviewer believes in rainbows and unicorns. Forgive me, but his tone leaves one with the impression that He has lived a soft, protected, day-at-the-beach-life devoid of genuine tragedy. And worst of all, the reviewer is a boot-strapper...everything is your own fault. Society plays no role. Fate plays no role.This reviewer will never understand, that despite his motivational-speaker-cliches, life is devastatingly cruel for millions of people. Many will guess He has never been in combat. Never worked in a coal mine, or a steel mill, and never had to struggle.
The real problem is overreliance on simple ideologies about complex beliefs which are required to keep up organization and mean that only the people in the most extreme situations where even the inconvenient cracks can't be powered through will try to consciously change their beliefs. But this leads to praise of the broken parts slipping through for some people because idealism is self-contradicting in extreme situations, so there's a chance for an opposite moral narrative - Every 8 year old kid on flash gaming forums back in the good old days
