Review of Falling Down (1993) by Choen L — 26 Mar 2017

I first watched this back in 1993 as a teenager, and had a great time laughing at how one angry man is making really blunt commentary on what little I knew about American society. That misrepresented hamburger sure stuck to mind.

Watching it again as a 39 year old, the movie holds an entirely different experience. The character that Michael Douglas played is about the same age as I am, and his in-movie child is about as old as mine. Now there's nothing funny about it, as I can relate to a lot of stresses that he had to go through as a functioning member of society, and the bouts of anger borne out of the frustrations and failures, and temptation is to just give up and do things according to your own rules. How most of us go 'oh fuck it', but actually go and 'fuck it'.

Michael Douglas's character, if he wasn't white, would have been called, in today's term, a terrorist.

This movie is a very angry tragedy.