Pratfalling Down

I'd avoided watching 1993's Falling Down for decades. Everything I ever heard about it told me it wasn't something that would interest me and the fact that it was directed by Joel Schumacher did nothing to commend it. But a friend asked me to watch it a couple weeks ago so I finally did. It's pretty much what I expected but I was more entertained than I had anticipated.

I shouldn't dismiss Schumacher out of hand, I did like Lost Boys. Just because I didn't like his Batman movies or Phantom of the Opera adaptation shouldn't make me assume I'd always hate one of his work. I guess it's easy to see the recurrence of a dark or anti-hero in these movies. Michael Douglas' Bill Foster in Falling Down is certainly closer to an actual anti-hero than how the term is usually meant to-day. He occupies the space of a protagonist for much of the movie but he engages in villainous actions. Robert Duvall plays a cop with extraordinary patience and empathy for contrast. As Bill responds to small infractions with excessive violence, Duvall's character, Prendergast, responds with excessive restraint to his extraordinarily abusive wife and co-workers. Prendergast's journey in the film is to somewhere in the middle while Bill's journey is to somewhere further out to sea, "past the point of no return," as he says. Was this a reference to The Phantom of the Opera?

A lot of critics of the movie scold its fans for sympathising with Bill. I don't know how many people actually do. It should take no more than the barest scrap of intelligence to see that, yes, it's silly McDonalds stops serving breakfast at 10am but, no, pulling an uzi on the store manager is not a constructive response.

Both Duvall and Douglas give good performances but I found Schumacher and screenwriter Ebbe Roe Smith's manipulations a little too broad to take as anything more than campy fun. It's easy to see that at the start of the filmmaking process they set a rule, "Everyone in this world is an asshole," and proceeding accordingly. It's hot and there's a traffic jam but everyone, from the drivers to the motorcycle cop who stops to get Bill's car out of the road, is about ten times angrier than is natural for the situation. The panhandler who tries to scam Bill by telling him he's starving is actually holding a hot dog at eye level the whole time. It's true, sometimes panhandlers can be surprisingly stupid but they're never as persistent as this guy is when Bill walks away from him. Generally the last thing these guys want to do is cause a big scene.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised to get this kind of material from the guy who's primarily known now for putting nipples on Batman's costume.