Movies

Late To The Party: Falling Down (1993)

Each week in Late to the Party, someone posts about an older piece of media that they’ve just experienced for the first time. On bat, this week is Falling Down, a 1993 action drama directed by Joel Schumacher, written by Ebbe Roe Smith and starring Michael Douglass, Barbara Hershey, and Robert Duvall.

“A briefcase, a lunch and a man on the edge
Each step gets closer to losing his head
Is someone in heaven are they looking down
‘Cause nothing is fair just you look around
Falling down, falling down, falling down.” —Iron Maiden, “Man on the Edge”
Spoilers for the film inbound.
Plot: The 1993 film Falling Down has two main plot threads. The first plot thread involves D-FENS (Michael Douglass who’s character is mostly known by the words on his custom license plate) as he rapidly spirals out of control and angrily lashes out at anything and anyone who stands in the way of his quest to get home for his Daughter’s birthday party, and calling his ex-wife (Hershey) on every payphone he finds to either taunt her or stand silently on the line. The second deals with Officer Prendergast (Robert Duvall) on his last day before retirement and his investigation into the man wreaking havoc across town. These two stories play out in cat & mouse fashion with Prendergast trying to follow the trail of D-FENS as the reports of his rampage come in. The two threads meet up at the end of the movie when D-FENS makes it to his destination and chases his ex and daughter down to the nearby pier. After a back and forth between the two main characters that delivers the film’s thesis, D-FENS loses his life when he’s shot through the chest for pulling a gun on Prendergast.
Characters:
  1. D-FENS (Michael Douglass): A former defense company worker (he used to work on missiles) he’s short on patience and even shorter on temper. He starts the film seemingly as a down on his luck everyman type complete with a child but as he continues to falling down further and further his darker side starts to show up. This darker side includes; an explosive often abusive temper, an almost robotic personality outside of that (his mom describes him thusly “He barely speaks to me and behaves like a mindless robot at the dinner table, shoveling food into his mouth with no signs of emotion at all.”) and a strong sense of entitlement to how the world should work and treat him
  2. Detective Prendergast (Robert Duvall): An easy-going mild-mannered Detective on his last day about to take early retirement. He starts the movie trying to avoid the shenanigans of his coworkers and the occasional phone calls from his beloved (if a little overbearing) wife. After hearing the Korean store owner and the girlfriend of one of the Hispanic gangsters both describe D-FENS he enlists the help of his friend Detective Sandra Torrez (Rachel Ticotin) and sets out to catch the guy and put an end to the reign of terror before more people get hurt.
  3. Elizabeth ‘Beth’ Travino (Barbara Hershey): A single mother getting ready for her daughter’s birthday party. What was supposed to be a nice fun day gives way to anxiety and dread as she awaits the dreaded arrival of her ex-husband D-FENS (even though he has no business showing up as there is a restraining order.) It is through her that we learn of D-FENS’s abusive tendencies as she divorced him over losing his temper one too many times and coming close to hitting her.

Themes:

Bill: I’m the bad guy? How did that happen? I did everything they told me to. Did you know I build missiles? I help to protect America. You should be rewarded for that. Instead, they give it to the plastic surgeon. They lied to me.
Sergeant Pendergast: Is that what this is about? You’re angry because you got lied to? Is that why my chicken dinner is drying out in the oven? Listen, pal, they lie to everyone. They lie to the fish. But that doesn’t give you any special right to do what you did today.

The film mainly serves as a deconstruction of the Angry White Man trope. Throughout the movie, D-FENS is shown lashing out at numerous targets. Most of these people facing his ire are doing so for issues that can charitably be described as annoying (the store charges too much for a soda, the burger looks nothing like the menu, the road is out.) In his overreactions, D-FENS is also shown to scare and harm several innocent bystanders some of these include a restaurant patron who chokes on their food in a panic, a family having a private BBQ at their boss’s house (seriously good on that plastic surgeon for letting the groundskeeper use the place with his family,) and literally everyone near the bridge he blows up with the rocket launcher. Of the two groups deserving of D-FENS’s ire (the gangsters who attempt to kill him in a drive-by and the Neo-Nazi) the first is a slight overreaction as one of the gangsters gets taunted before being shot. The Nazi (who is revealed almost immediately to be a fan of the D-FENS’s actions mistaking them as hate crimes), on the other hand, serves as the first major hint to the protagonist (and any audience members still on his side) that D-FENS is maybe not doing any good during his rampage.

Another important theme the film plays with is of being “Economically Viable.”  An important scene happens around the midway part of the film where D-FENS encounters a Black Man protesting outside of a bank because the bank was denying him a loan because as they put he’s not “Economically Viable.” This gets echoed back (though without the obvious implications that race is involved) a few scenes later when D-FENS climbs a fence into the Plastic Surgeon’s yard and complains to the groundskeeper and his family that a Plastic Surgeon can afford a nice house like that but he has to live with his mother because he wasn’t able to afford anything else.

A lot of the anxieties and issues that D-FENS complains about ultimately are real. It is just at the end of the day he does not know how to properly go about dealing with them. Prendergast himself is held up as the standard of one alternative and a much healthier way to deal with these problems. Prendergast like D-FENS has problems with his wife. But, instead of losing his temper and emotionally abusing her he, for the most part, treats her with love and empathy (even if at times it comes off as patronizingly sexist see his comments about her being high strung because all she had back in her youth was her looks.) He agrees to both taking a desk job after his injury and going for early retirement at her behest (though he does go back on his plans to retire after he gained his drive for justice back at the end of the movie.)

Criticisms: The film isn’t perfect, the characterizations of the supporting cast of cops around Prendergast is ripped straight out of cop movie stock characters vol 2. The rampage starts with D-FENS assaulting a Korean store owner while going on a rant about prices with bullshit about South Korea tossed in that the film doesn’t portray as bad as it really is (at least if it’s placement at the start of the rampage where D-FENS is supposed to be at his most reasonable is any indication)

Final Thoughts: If there is one thing the film captures well it is tension. This is a very tense movie. Be it racial tension, economic tension, tension born out of fear of the protagonist the film sells it hard and makes you feel on edge like everyone else. The movie is hot too. It says the events take place on the hottest day of the year and I believe it. Everyone is wearing summer clothes, sweat is beading down literally everyone’s faces and some shots of the film have that shimmer you only see on hot, hot days. The music is clever too, slowly picking up in intensity as D-FENS falls further and further down until it gets fast, hyper, and manic right before the final showdown as he runs across the pier to accost his family.

Conclusion: The film is honestly really really good. If it sounds good to you I highly recommend checking it out sometime. At the very least watch it for the performance of Michael Douglass, it is one of his signature roles for good reason.