Caught in the Breakdown: the Madness of ‘Falling Down’
When stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic coming home from work, a driver may go through a cycle of emotions from anger, sadness, the need to pee, or thinking of how much it might cost to buy a helicopter as a form of transportation. However, the familiar feeling of sitting in a parking lot on the highway is mostly irritation. But forget sitting in traffic. In everyday interactions like filling up the gas tank and being surprised by the price of a pack of gum in the grocery store to take it off the list because it costs $6. Or just wanting to snap on the cashier at your favorite fast food spot when the display of the product doesn't match up with what the real meal looks like.
Now, it's wrong to blame the general public for these problems, but there are a few individuals in this world who are a few bad interactions away from losing it. For Michael Douglas's character D-Fens, his breaking point was sitting in traffic in Joel Schumacher's 1993 crime thriller Falling Down.
The film follows a man (Michael Douglas) who's frustrated with the problems he sees in society and begins acting violently against those who question him, as all he wants to do is get home for his daughter's birthday.
Falling Down opens up with D-Fens in his car, sweating profusely and swatting bugs away as he bakes in Los Angeles traffic. He waves his hand around the A-C vent to get nothing but a soft, useless airflow. D-Fens abandons his car in the middle of the highway and begins his journey home on foot with his briefcase.
When watching this for the first time, an audience member might think this gentleman is having a bad day but quickly learns the character is a different kind of animal.
Back in the days before cell phones, D-Fens didn't have enough time to call home and tell his wife he'd be running late. Immediately, it is made clear that D-Fens is more than a disgruntled corporate employee when he beats a convenience store clerk after being refused the correct change needed to make a phone call. The audience knows his spiral has just begun when he finally loses it on the clerk, smashing powdered donuts, batteries, and prescription pills with a baseball bat.
Regardless of D-Fen's flaw of being short-tempered, he makes up for the destruction of merchandise by still paying for the can of Coke he wanted to change for to make the call home. Is this enough of an act of kindness to consider him an Anti-hero? Absolutely not. But the pure twistedness of his justification to still pay adds more to the character's psyche.
Before taking on the lead role in Falling Down, Michael Douglas had considered taking a break from acting to spend more time with his family. Leading up to working on the film, Douglas had starred in Fatal Attraction, Wall Street, Black Rain, and Basic Instinct, but when he read Ebbe Roe Smith's script for Falling Down, he claimed it was one of the best scripts he ever read and immediately took on the project.
What stands out in Douglas's role as D-Fens is his ability to transform into the deranged character shown on screen. And considering most of the characters Douglas has played before D-Fens, he took a big swing as an actor from being the guy usually running away from the deranged characters and not being the aggressor versus playing someone who loses all power and all sense of morals, unable to see the road ahead. Visioning a Michael Douglas character type, some might automatically revert to a smooth-talking, well-dressed, slicked-back hair man. But a man with a slightly overgrown buzz cut wearing glasses and a sleeve button-down shirt with a tie is not someone audiences would have seen Douglas become.
Falling Down also has a cat-and-mouse element to it. Law enforcement chases D-Fens around Los Angeles, trying to nail him for the crimes committed as he goes through his killing rampage to make it home. And it leaves it up to none other than LAPD Detective Prendergast, played by Robert Duvall, to put the pieces together and catch 'D-Fens' on his last day on duty before retiring.
The character of Detective Prendergast provides a whole other story to the film that gives it needed substance. Otherwise, the audience would watch Michael Douglas terrorize the streets for 113 minutes. Prendergast does not want to retire but is forced to by his wife, who is home waiting for him to turn in his badge so they can move to Arizona and live the rest of their lives in retirement. But this case of catching a criminal who pays for his purchases while still violent keeps Pendergast in the office and the chicken in the oven until the crime is solved.
Falling Down is a Shakespearean tragedy. D-Fens doesn't just give up and turn himself in. He says it himself during a phone call with his wife Beth (Barbara Hershey) after committing murder how he is "Past the point of no return." Viewers don't root for D-Fens to get what they want. As a matter of fact, viewers would like him to stay away from his wife and daughter as much as possible. However, the movie watcher cannot help but want to see what happens when D-Fens finally makes it home to his family.
For director Joel Schumacher, Falling Down is the apex mountain of his directing career. Before coming on to the project, Schumacher's most well-known film was St. Elmo's Fire with the ensemble 'Rat Pack.' However, Schumacher understood how to shoot this film, letting the early 1990s Los Angeles and Venice Beach surrounding area play a vital part of the movie as the backdrop. The rest of Schumacher's filmography is history minus A Time to Kill and the infamous nipples on George Clooney's Batman suit in Batman & Robin.
For the Gen-Z or Gen-X casual movie watcher, think of Falling Down to the works of Todd Phillips Joker. Although D-Fens and Arthur Fleck want very different things and live different lives, one common thread is that they are products of a system that has thrown them to the side and left them to fend on their own—a problem continuing to shine through in today's social issues.
Falling Down is available on streaming platforms. Give it a watch before bed.
Rating: 3/5
