Falling Down ** (1993, Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall, Barbara Hershey) – Classic Movie Review 10,652

Director Joel Schumacher’s 1993 Falling Down is an extremely worrying thriller using a sensitive issue for entertainment. But Michael Douglas reckons he gives his best-ever performance as the burnt-out All-American everyman, a middle-aged Los Angeles defence worker who has lost both his job and his family and cracks up, abandoning his car on the jammed freeway and setting out on a bloody odyssey.

Robert Duvall plays the cop on the day of his retirement who tries to stop Douglas’s trail of bloodshed before he gets to his ex-wife (Barbara Hershey) and kid.

Douglas and Duvall fill out their clichéd roles with conviction, and this is a grade A production exploiter, slickly handled by director Schumacher, but strangely unsuspenseful as a thriller and uninformative as a trip into a troubled psyche.

Falling Down may have its serious, thoughtful, intelligent side as a study in rage and alienation, but it is not much of a contribution to urban harmony, and no better than the Death Wish films, though it has a continuing relevance.

Also in the cast are Rachel Ticotin, Tuesday Weld, Frederic Forrest, Lois Smith, D W Moffett and Dedee Pfeiffer.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,652

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