White Man's Laundry?

FALLING DOWN (1993)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally written in 1993)

Rush Limbaugh said back in 1993 that "Falling Down" was a falsity; an unrealistic depiction of the deterioration of the American Dream. I normally would not agree with Limbaugh (who was funnier and sharper in those days) but he did nail this overwrought movie down to its paranoid essence.

Michael Douglas plays a four-eyed unemployed worker for a defense contractor named William "D-FENS" Foster, who has a short haircut that seems to have stepped out of a 1950's classroom. He loses his temper in traffic, abandons his car, is armed with a shotgun and a bazooka, and walks all over the city of L.A. He is desperate to confront the very issues that bother him such as Korean convenience store owners, gays in army surplus stores, homeless people, construction crews working on repairing streets that need no repairing, trespassing on Latino gang turf, and insisting on getting breakfast at a fast-food joint. "He has a propensity for violence," says William's ex-wife (played by Barbara Hershey). William also has a propensity for walking literally hundreds of miles around L.A. without breaking a sweat - he is the Terminator who needs an attitude adjustment.

"Falling Down" is a satirical attempt to deconstruct a society that has changed from the "good old days" - a white man's paranoia tale of the withering American Dream with more right-winged fervor than even Limbaugh himself has (it is odd how this blowhard himself is no fan of this movie). The problem is that Michael Douglas gives a cartoonish performance of a wacko with no real ideology - he is simply mad as hell and is armed to the teeth. The fast-food joint sequence goes on too long (William decides he will have lunch after all after being told that breakfast hours are over), as well as the army surplus store sequence with the Nazified owner (Frederic Forrest). I never understood the point of this odyssey where the exasperated William creates more havoc than what already exists in La-La Land. The movie is so unrealistic and unintentionally funny that its rather disturbing subliminal messages about society don't register ("White Man's Laundry" signs flash on screen occasionally so that we can empathize with this crude antihero?) This movie is about an angry loon with no dimension or cunning insight into his neurosis. "Falling Down" falls before it really even starts.