Reflection on Falling Down (1993)

Many spoilers alert

I came across this clip on Youtube the other day and could not resist giving the entire movie a chance. With two big name stars Michael Douglas and Robert Duval leading the charge, how bad could it be, right? The description from IMDB is “An ordinary man frustrated with the various flaws he sees in society begins to psychotically and violently lash out against them.” In this film, Michael Douglas makes four major pitstops on his journey to arrive at his daughter’s birthday party.

The Convenient Store: This scene was precariously placed on the edge of being an outright racist depiction of a Korean man running a mini-mart business. Michael Douglas has a conversation with this Mr. Lee that borders on being anti-immigration but then turns to frustration towards the inflated prices that Mr. Lee is charging for the items in his store. Since this was the first scene that showcased the main character’s disgruntled attitude towards the “societal flaws” he sees, it was unclear if this film was going to turn into an example best shown in a class on depictions of racism in the media. However, it appeared that Michael was triggered into a violent fit of destroying Mr. Lee’s convenient store more out of frustration towards inflation and the high price of a simple can of Coca-Cola rather than the fact that Mr. Lee was Korean. My faith in the film was restored in a later scene when a Japanese-American police officer clapped back at Robert Duval’s character with “He (Mr. Lee) is speaking Korean, I am Japanese, but you never bothered to learn the difference”. From here, Michael escapes with his cold can of Coke and moves onward towards the distant birthday party.
The Breakfast Scene: I loved this scene. Michael waffles back and forth between wanting breakfast, to which he is told its too late to order, and wanting lunch. The manager of this “Whamburger” is a 30 something white guy with the most infuriating customer-service grin you havve ever seen. He repeatedly tells Michael that he is too late to order breakfast (by a measly 3 minutes) until Michael pulls out one of his guns and demands his food. He then decides he is ready for lunch, but when he is presented with the flattened, disgusting burger, he goes off on a whole diatribe. He makes a point that anyone who has been coaxed into a McDonalds has thought, “Why does the advertised picture of a fast food burger look so plump, juicy and delicious but what we are served is a flat, dry, grey piece of mystery meat?”. I am curious how much of a narrative the director intended to make on the obesity epidemic and the clear hand that low cost fast-food has had in encouraging its rapid growth.
The Nazi Surplus Store: Michael has been repeatedly checking his shoes throughout the film and finally has enough of the large hole that has grown in the bottom of one shoe. He stops in at an army surplus store for some new kicks. The manager of this store is incredibly homophobic and goes so far as to verbally harass, and then threatens with a gun, two young men who are shopping together. After they leave, the manager takes Michael to the back room to show him his Nazi memorabilia. At this point of the film, it finally clicked for me that the director was not trying to be racist in his portrayals of the previous Korean and Latino characters, instead he’s been presenting the most aggravatingly stereotypical characters he could put on screen without breaking the realism of the film. The director does this beautifully by building the frustration within each scene by having the dialogue between Michael and the characters he meets be incredibly infuriating to hear and experience as a member of the audience. Tension is built and built until the audience and Michael can no longer handle the situation, at which point Michael explodes in a destructive rage to then calmly walk away, on to the next segment of society to rail against.
The Golf Course: Nobody is safe when Michael Douglas has somewhere to be. All I want to say for this scene is that I enjoyed Michael’s speech about how ridiculous the members-only golf course he is walking through is and how that space should be shared for families to have picnics and kids to play on rather than for old men in silly clothes to hit balls and drive around in carts. Michael goes through a bit of a recognition that he has been lied to when he continues on through a plastic surgeon’s backyard. Michael had worked hard his whole life and still could not match the opulence of the surgeon’s home. This calls into the dialogue a discussion of the ever-present rat race of constantly clambering over our fellow humans to achieve ever greater heights of wealth when there are only so few people in this world who have enough money to never have to worry or have their desires out of reach.
The Ex-Wife’s Home: Michael finally arrives at his long-awaited destination and his true character is, at last, revealed. His ex-wife has mentioned throughout the film that Michael’s nature tends towards violence, despite his never having hit her or his daughter, but that the threat of violence constantly emanated from his actions. When Michael arrives to the house, his ex-wife and daughter have fled their home so he sits in the living room and watches old home videos of his daughter’s past birthdays. It is in these videos that Michael’s violent speech towards his wife and daughter is experienced by the audience. This twists Michael’s character from a once almost understandably frustrated every-day guy who finds himself in increasingly frustrating situations, to a man with deep psycho-emotional issues that could really use several years of therapy.

All in all, I really enjoyed this film and I look forward to rewatching it in the future. The progression of the main character from a father in a difficult situation to an insane and violent berserker is well paced and intriguing to watch. Have you seen this movie? What did you think of it? Leave a comment about your favorite take away or scene from the film!