Falling Down: Happy 20th Birthday

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 20^th anniversary edition (if they are going to make one, I imagine they will). I’ll be doing that very soon.