Overlooked Movies: Falling Down

Falling Down premiered in 1993.  Maybe it's just me, but it seems as if it might have been made last week.  

Michael Douglas plays William Foster.  He'ss divorced and he's lost his job.  On the day depicted in the movie, he just wants to get to his daughter's birthday party, but the world conspires against him.    Trapped in traffic, he leaves his car and starts to walk.  At each encounter he has, his frustration builds and his reactions become more extreme.  First he gets a baseball bat, then a knife, then guns.  And he uses all of them against the people he encounters: convenience store owners, gangbangers, ordinary jerks, neo-nazis, fast-food jerks, and others.  His violent reactions escalate as his walk continues.  If you think this is all exaggerated, well, maybe so.  But have you been keeping up with the "First it was the thin mints melee . . . ." meme on this blog?

Robert Duvall plays Pendergrast, a cop on his last day on the job.  He's sort of the other side of the coin here.  He's calm and rational, even though he has as many reasons to crack as Foster does.  He's even caught in the same traffic jam.  He's also the one who realizes that all the crime reports coming in can be connected to one man, so he goes after him.  The final confrontation between the two is ironic and right out of current headlines.  I won't say why, but if you've seen the movie, you might remember what happens.

If you watched the trailer I embedded, you saw the question Douglas asks of Duvall at the end: "I'm the bad guy?"  Yes, he is, but what this movie made me realize is that so am I.  I have to admit that I could easily identify with the character and his reactions.  I just haven't acted on my worst impulses, but (and maybe I'm just a terrible person) I find it a little hard not to cheer Foster on.  Looking at Facebook these days, I see a lot of people who seem to have as much rage and frustration inside them as Foster does.  I hope they don't get a bag of guns.

Falling Down doesn't get much ink these days, but it's a movie with a lot to say about the times we live in.