According to Wikipedia, one of my favorite movies Falling
Down has been released twenty years ago today, on February 26, 1993. Twenty
damn years! I was 10 going on 11.
Falling
Down is a movie most of us angry white guys have in our DVD collection (I’m not
part of the majority, looking to get the DVD soon myself). For those who saw
the movie, it depicts a white male in a white shirt and tie just trying to get
to his little daughter’s birthday party. Fed up with his car not spitting out
cold air on a very hot day, he just leaves it in the middle of standstill
traffic. He walks of the freeway and heads down to a store owned by a Korean
grocer Mr. Lee, looking to get change for a phone call on a payphone (in those
days, mostly wealthy people had cell phones, everyone else had to depend on pay
phones). Mr. Lee won’t make change and also charges a can of Coca-Cola at 85
cents (or as he says it: ‘eighty-fie cent, you pay or go’), which infuriates
our nameless hero into busting up his merchandise with a baseball bat (in which
Mr. Lee tried to use on our hero) and giving out a lesson on pricing. Mr. Lee
eventually submits and charges the can of soda for ‘fifty cent.’ Our hero pays
for the soda, gets the change himself and goes bye-bye.
Next,
our hero walks around in gangland and interest two Latino gang members. He
decided to stop and enjoy is Coca-Cola in an empty field. The two gang members
confront our hero and tell him that he is not allowed there and eventually is
threaten by knifepoint. Our hero overthrows them with the baseball bat, takes
their knife and continues on. The two gang members now in a car with two
friends drive around in search for blood. They eventually find Foster making a
phone call to his wife (we learn that he is not welcome and they happen to be
divorced). They began firing at Foster and any unlucky bastards nearby with Uzi’s,
but failed to get Foster. They crash the car and three of the four appear to be
dead while one survives but is badly injured. Foster see no sympathy and grabs
a loose Uzi and shoots him in the leg, despite the gang members pleas, he takes
the bag of weapons and continues on.
While
at the police station, a day until retirement, Det. Prendergast (William Duvall)
takes on the assignment of going after our hero, later identifying him as
William Foster, he and his partner (Rachel Ticotin) go on asking questions and
following Foster one step behind.
Foster
goes on to a Whammy-Burger (perhaps a parody of Burger Kind or Mickey D’s) and
pulls out a gun because ‘they weren’t serving breakfast.’ And while so, frightening
most of the staff and the customers (that manager guy looked awfully dorky).He
tells off a bum who tries to panhandle him. He tries to make another call to
home on a payphone but gets the busy signal; he shoots up the payphone after a
man behind him complains.
He also encounters a neo-Nazi
homophobe named Nick (Fredric Forrest) who believes he and Foster are the same,
but Foster disagrees. The two fight with Foster getting the upper hand at the
end, then shooting him to death. He takes Nick’s rocket launcher and walks on.
He has an argument with a construction crew member who eventually admits that
they’re presence is not really needed, so with Nick’s rocket launcher, he gives
them something to fix.
His mean streak continues into a
country club where an infuriated golfer doesn’t want him to ‘pass through’ and
shoots a golf ball to Foster. Our hero avoids it and walks up to the golfer
with a shotgun. Instead of shooting him, he shoots the golf cart which goes
down the hill and into a lake and sinks, carrying the man’s pills for his
heart. The man can’t handle what is happening and goes on dying of a heart attack while Foster
says with a smile on his face, “You are going to die with that stupid little
hat on, how does that feel?” (Got that quote wrong... don't feel like revising it, take a look at the video below:)
I spent little too much explaining
this movie and spoiling it to the few who probably haven’t seen it. Most of us
have seen this movie and today, it turns 20 years old. Next year, this movie
can walk in the bar and say ‘”gimme a beer.”
For the very few who visit this
blog, go and get the DVD, or maybe you can wait for the 20th anniversary edition (if they
are going to make one, I imagine they will). I’ll be doing that very soon.
