Michael Douglas spends most of Falling Down carrying a briefcase he never opens for anything useful. That is the movie in one image: a man with the tools of ordinary life and no place left to use them.
Trailer, via Warner Bros. Rewind.
William Foster Walks Out of Traffic
Joel Schumacher directed Falling Down, released in 1993 and written by Ebbe Roe Smith. Douglas plays William Foster, an unemployed defense worker stuck in Los Angeles traffic on a hot day. When his air conditioning fails, he leaves the car and starts walking. He wants to reach his family for his daughter’s birthday.
The errands turn into a rampage. A Korean store owner refuses change for a phone call and comes at him with a baseball bat; Foster takes the bat and wrecks the displays. Two gang members threaten him with a knife; he attacks them with the bat and takes the knife.
Later, the gang members open fire on him at a payphone, killing four bystanders. Foster picks up a weapon they had, shoots the surviving gang member in the leg, and leaves with their bag of weapons. At a fast-food counter he pulls a gun over the breakfast-to-lunch switch and fires into the ceiling. He shoots a phone booth apart because someone is waiting to use it.
Robert Duvall plays Martin Prendergast, a retiring police officer trying to catch him. Beth, Foster’s ex-wife, has a restraining order and calls the police.
A Haircut and a Paycheck
Schumacher and hairstylist Lynda Gurasich designed Foster’s signature haircut. Douglas said it gave him “the feeling of the late ’50s and the early ’60s,” and that his character seemed to come from a period when things made sense. He added: “There’s a lot of people who are a paycheck away from being on the streets and being out of work who did everything right.”
That is the film’s real subject, and it is also its problem. The rage is legible. The movie keeps handing Foster a fresh outrage instead of a person.
| Falling Down | |
|---|---|
| Budget | $25 million |
| Gross | $96 million |
| Runtime | 113 minutes |
| Metacritic | 56/100 |
Key facts
– Release: 1993
– Director: Joel Schumacher
– Writer: Ebbe Roe Smith
– Runtime: 113 minutes
– Budget: $25 million
– Gross: $96 million
– Metacritic: 56/100
On its release, the film received mixed reviews, with some praising the performances from Douglas and Duvall while criticizing the violence and tone. It grossed $96 million against a $25 million budget and took the top spot at the United States box office in its first two weeks.
In later years, the film has gained cult status, with many citing it as one of Schumacher’s best films and one of Douglas’s best roles. Douglas and Duvall are the reason it survives. The violence is not.
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