Rating: 
Summary: A little bit in all of us!!
Review: This movie seems to exude feelings that the average Joe has everyday in this country. The disgust and utter contempt one feels for the injustices occurring everywhere. This movie is 10 years old but has just as much meaning in the new Millennia as it did in the 90's. It's about an average man, Bill Foster played by Michael Douglas, on the verge of cracking. He's lost his wife to a divorce, lost custody of his daughter, and lost his job. It takes the painful LA traffic and a broken air conditioner in his car to push him over the edge. Thus starts his journey. This movie is his story and his trek through LA to get back home. It's about his abhorrence of everything wrong and he's not afraid to make it known. This movie seems to convey the thoughts of many people in the US and it helps one empathize with his character. You can't help routing for this guy. He's just trying to make it home and bad things keep happening. They get progressively worse and he gets progressively more violent. Some of the things he does will make you want to cheer. But in the grand scheme of things you feel sad for him. This movie is unique in the fact that there's not a true protagonist and a true antagonist. Robert Duvall plays a cop, Prendergast, who is very similar to Michael Douglas' character. He too is plagued by problems and he's such a warm character in the movie that one can't help but feel sorry for him. His wife is having a nervous breakdown, and his only daughter passed away. He has a desk job now because his wife wanted him off the streets and he's at his last day at work because he's retiring. The other cops at the precinct, with exception to his partner, all give him a hard time. During his last day he gets reports of incidences that he thinks are caused by the same person. These incidences are in fact caused by Michael Douglas' character...And Robert Duvall wants to stop him. So it becomes good guy vs. not so bad guy. A cop vs. a self-made vigilante. Who do you route for?? This is a sad movie that depicts what might happen if a regular Joe Schmoe were to snap. The story, combined with great performances and an awesome, and I do mean awesome, musical score, makes this movie well worth seeing! It's a very powerful movie that is funny at times and sad at others. Anyone who's ever been angry at something will enjoy this movie. Oh... if you're not sane please don't watch this movie. It will give you ideas.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm the Bad Guy?
Review: I loved the premise of this movie, sort of a more complex version of Deathwish but by the end I wish I was watching Chuck Bronson instead. It's at the fast food restaurant that Michael Keaton goes from being believably and admiribly vigilante-like to just being a crazy who snaps ..... but then he goes back to harassing old rich guys on golf courses and has you kind of on his side again. Then you find out he's been going nowhere for a month, he screams at his kid, etc. You want to root for him and then he does something over the top (and although that may sound like its making the character more developed, it's really not) I think that had Michael Keaton stood on that line between good guy/bad guy rather than just weaving back and forth the film would have been much mor charged and unsettling. Also I don't mention Bobby Duvall because, even though he's always a great actor, his storyline is boring and don't care about his wife or his retirement. Rent Deathwish instead and get guilty thrills out of Bronson shooting countless street punks.
Rating:
Summary: A Real Tour De Force
Review: This movie is now 10 years old, and being discovered by a whole new audience, but the story and plot are essentially timeless. A good subtitle to this movie could have been "Good Guys Finish Last" as we follow the spiral of ultimate self destruction Michael Douglas embarks on to it's climatic, if reasonably predictable conclusion. The plot is quite simple, a middle class hard working, respectable man with no hint of a criminal past, or even propensity for violent or abnormal behavour is gradually pushed, up to and over the edge of his personal tolerance level. What results is him crashing down on the other side, and taking casualties with him as he "falls down". I find it inconceivable to think that most of us will not be able to relate to at least some of the burdens that befall him, and this is the real power of the film. After losing his job (due to policy and cutbacks), an acrimonous divorce, and a general crummy hand he has been dealt he begins to act upon every tiny thing that has and does frustrates him (as many things frustrate us all) as he journeys through the movie, with devastating results. I don't know if there is a message in the film, but it is certainly compelling, and often gripping. Robert Duvall puts in a terrific performance as a veteran cop with one day to retirement who begins to piece together the unlikely string of events, in a powerful subplot which runs in tandem with the exploits of Douglas, until the two cross paths toward the end of the picture. Gritty, often graphic, and very powerful - this movie will live with you a long time after you have viewed it, for many reasons (most I which I don't have time to list here). If you haven't seen this movie yet, do so - I cannot recommend it enough.
Rating:
Summary: on the edge
Review: takes an interesting premise and then takes it a bit too far. In addition, I felt that the movie went for the easy gags/shock effect, like the pepsi incident, while he was trying to make a phone call. And call me crazy, but have you ever heard of a cop on his last day before retirement acting like Duval did? Ya godda be kidding, the movie fell down, er..., on that alone!!
Rating:
Summary: Falling Down for Standing UP
Review: Douglas goes on a rampage. He's lost his wife, his daughter, and his job. His no fear attitude drives this movie to the edge, causing you to laugh, and cry. He has a straight forward approach to his problems, from traffic jams, immigrants that speak poor english, gang-banger thugs, to white supremists, fast food businesses that show the thick juicy sandwich but serve dry pieces of cardboard, and making sure his daughter is financially well-off. Duvall does an excellent job as a co-star tracking down the flipped out Douglas.
Rating:
Summary: Misinterpreted and unjustly trashed as racist
Review: Ok after reading a few of these reviews I cannot resist the urge to get the point accross that ninety percent of you reviewers must be the types of people that fall into the crowd of politically correct nerds that cannot accept that total equality is a fallacy. For the most part, your interpretations of this movie are misconstrued by your own biases and the main point of the movie, that the average white working male (yes I said average white) is a thing of the past. The movie is, more or less, geared towards a changing society and delivers a powerful message that good and hardworking men... the kind that keep their mouths shut and just do their jobs respectfully... are no longer guaranteed success in life (as the old motto would have us believe that hard working men and women will ultimately get what they deserve).
In all, this is a great movie. I wanted to stand up and cheer for Micheal Douglas's character throughout the movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Good concept, poor execution
Review: Falling Down is a movie about the average Joe's frustrations with a sick world. The performances by Douglas and Duvall are both outstanding. The big problem that I had with this movie was that it seemed that the director was trying too hard to prove his point. Here's two examples to show what I mean. First, Douglas' encounter at the fast-food restaurant is a bit overblown. I admit that it is frustrating to miss breakfast by only a few minutes at one of these restaurants, but is it really that big of a deal? It almost seems that the director had to justify Douglas drawing his automatic by having the employees act like complete jerks. Even then, one must realize that the employees are under stress just like Douglas is and can hardly be blamed for getting angry when a customer disagrees with a blanket policy set by the company's corporate headquarters that they cannot change. The second example involves Duvall's encounter with his captain. The captain says something to the effect of, "I know it's your last day, and just so you know, I never liked you." My initial reaction was that Duvall is surrounded by the same sick world as Douglas, but would a real boss, no matter how cruel, really say that? Once again, the director is simply trying to prove his point by stretching the limits of our reality. Falling Down leaves us with a feeling that we live in an absolutely detestable world. Maybe sometimes we can agree with this statement; however, I think that the director failed to realize that the world really isn't as bad as he portrays it.
Rating:
Summary: A film that really leaves its mark on you
Review: This is a powerful film, but I personally don't look at it as some type of social commentary or condemnation of modern society, although it certainly touches on some of the problems that will always exist among human beings. Falling Down may well have a potent effect on anyone watching it, though. It always leaves me feeling really, really weird because it touches on so many things we all have to put up with each day, presents a monster whom I can't help but sympathize with in some degree, provides us with a hero whose own life is rife with undeserved problems, and runs its course atop a strong undercurrent of sadness. Michael Douglas gives one of his better performances as Bill Foster, an unremarkable man who finds his world torn apart and finally just snaps. He has lost his wife and little girl (which is his own fault); he's lost his job, the one thing that made him feel important; he just wants things to be like they used to be. He doesn't want to sit in traffic with no air conditioning or pay almost a dollar for a little can of soda or see plastic surgeons living the life of Riley while he can't even support his little girl. His journey "home" is an extraordinary one, and the kinds of awful people he encounters on the way do nothing to help his mentality. It's hard not to cheer him on when he manages to effect an escape from a couple of gangsters trying to rob him, but acts such as holding a burger joint up just because they refuse to serve him breakfast after lunch time is, obviously, way out there. No matter what terrible things he does, though, I can't get completely past the fact that he earnestly wants to see his little girl and give her a present for her birthday; in a clearly psychotic way, I find this movie somewhat touching, and that only makes the whole experience more depressing than it already is. Robert Duvall is indeed quite good as the good cop, Prendergast, pursuing this vigilante on his last day before retirement. His life is no dream either, but of course he handles his own problems in a way quite unlike our man Foster does. His wife is clearly disturbed, made frighteningly burdensome and vulnerable by the death of their own little girl and an earlier wounding of her husband on the job. For her benefit, he took a desk job and is forced to put up with a lot of jokes and insults from his fellow cops, including his own boss. Except for his partner, all of the cops in this film are as unfeeling and cruel as some of the shady characters Foster meets up with during his journey home, and that is to me one of the more disturbing aspects of this film. One of the things I liked most about Falling Down was its attempt to portray Foster as one very disturbed man and not a stand-in for any type of stereotypical vigilante; one character in particular makes this point quite clearly when, discovering that Foster doesn't actually agree with him in his own twisted, stereotypically extremist mindset, he asks the man just what kind of vigilante he is supposed to be. My own thinking is that Falling Down is not meant to be a warning about a group of potential Bill Fosters festering in the midst of society; instead, by showing us what happens to one man, it is warning us to walk carefully on our own journeys and to be careful to keep our tempers in check even when the world seems to be out to get us. At the same time, it doesn't imply that we should roll over and play dead whenever a problem comes our way, using the character of Prendergast to show us that we can and should stand up for ourselves but only in constructive ways. I really have a lot of conflicting emotions about this film, but the one thing I am sure of is that Falling Down is an unforgettable motion picture well worth seeing.
Rating:
Summary: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
Review: This movie taps into the core of what's wrong with our "society." First of all, it shows that we don't actually live in a society, we live in a cesspool. The definition of a society is a "group of people distinguished from others by mutual interests, shared institutions, and a common culture." And I don't mean consumerism. During the film, however, we don't see things that resemble "mutual interests" and "shared institutions." What we see is multiculturalism, which is the opposite of culture. We see groups fighting against one another, struggling to survive. We see people stuck in traffic like cattle on the way to slaughter. The only thing people share in common is paying their taxes to the Internal Revenue Service. The government has to milk all of its cows. And when they're done using you, they discard you like a piece of garbage. People are reduced to cogs in a machine. One of the most poignant scenes of the film involves a black man trying to get a loan from the bank, but he's declined because he is not "economically viable," in other words the bank believes he isn't worth exploiting. The bottom line for the bank is profit. So he gets thrown to the curb. People are treated like numbers and ratios: which amount to dollar signs. Some "community," eh? Deceit is another theme in Falling Down. People are often misled and taken advantage of in society. The cheeseburger on the menu always looks bigger and tastier than in it does in real life. These subtle acts of lying are common enough in our world that people don't care or notice. I wonder how long will it take before everything bursts at the seams? If this movie is any indication, it'll be sooner rather than later. Thank our "elected" officials for selling out America. As my favorite bumper sticker points out, "we don't have a democracy, we have an auction." Well, it's time to go watch Jerry Springer.
Rating:
Summary: Falling Down (1993)
Review: the movie itself is 5 stars, but I give the DVD 4 stars because I wish it had contained some speacial features. Anyway, this is a great film that you should see if you sometimes get to sick of the everday world. If you cant stand the road rage, rude people, rude customer service then you can relate to this film. This film is about us all; all *BLEEP* we take from the outside world and the stress of our sometimes crumbling personal lives can catch up to us. If you ever feel like your going to snap then this film is a great release and yet delivers an important message about why we need to stay grounded and play the game till its over. Sometimes there isnt anything worth playing for, but sometimes there is and we forget...
if you like Micheal Douglas, I reccommend "war of the roses", "a perfect murder", "the game" and "fatal attraction"
|
