Falling Down – Deluxe Edition (1992/Warner DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: B- Film: B+
Of all
the controversial films Michael Douglas made at his acting peak of not that
long ago, the best of them (even over Basic
Instinct and Fatal Attraction)
is Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down. The 1992 release was very bold (from the Ebbe
Roe Smith screenplay) in its time and at a time American cinema had enough of
happy mall movies. Though not the hit
Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction would be,
it laid the pavement for that film’s success and is not only the better film,
but a classic of the time that shows why the country would elect Bill Clinton president. The tale of a man not totally together,
walking through America and it as history with the resulting effects playing
out as a film has been as dangerously safe as Forrest Gump and as tricky as The
Curious Case Of Benjamin Button. You
can read more about that at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/8562/The+Curious+Case+Of+Benjamin+But
In this
best, smartest, most adult and mature of the three films, Douglas plays a man
named Bill Foster, who has lost his job at a
military company now that the end of The Cold War has caused multi-national
military companies to size back. A
victim of the cutbacks, he is without a job, future and starts to slowly turn
on his the world around him as it has slowly turned on him. He starts by abandoning his car on a freeway where
traffic is at a stand still and goes from there.
He keeps
calling his ex-wife (Barbara Hershey) that he is forbidden to see from being
abusive against her and their daughter who is also not allowed to see. On the way, he finds himself annoyed, harassed
and ultimately threatened in several situations, which very slowly pushes him
over the edge and he is not well to begin with.
Some on the Reactionary Left have tried to write this off as some kind
of fascist film, but that kind of short cut in thinking and easy dismissal of
the film is hardly what we would call thorough film analysis.
Instead,
it is a portrait of how badly Neo-Conservatism had ravaged the U.S. and how the
victory against Soviet Russia was ruined by greed and neglect, along with the dangerous
shrinking of the middle class. As timely
a film as ever and mature enough to be politically incorrect, it turns out the
Clinton Years were a temporary delay in the country being thrown out and gutted
by a privileged few, with a “war on terror” turning out to be a distraction
from fleecing and stealing on unseen levels.
Too bad too few saw this film or took what it was clearly showing
seriously.
The
performances are amazing all around including a parallel story about a lifetime
police officer (Robert Duvall brilliantly underplaying his role) about to
retire and having issues at home and with his wife (Tuesday Weld; they lost a
child together and he still blames himself), the underrated Rachel Ticotin as
his partner and the amazing Frederic Forrest as the Neo-Nazi Army-Navy Store
owner who become the last straw for Bill, who becomes known as the
vigilante D-FENS.
An
American classic, see it if you have never seen it before and see it again if
it has been a while; you won’t be sorry.
The anamorphically
enhanced 2.35 X 1 image is supposedly from a new transfer, but this is not how
the film looked in 35mm and has both dull detail and color issues throughout
not true to the original release.
Director of Photography Andrzej Bartkowiak did such an amazing job in
shooting this in the scope frame that it only enhanced the intensity of the
film overall. The Dolby Digital 2.0
Stereo is on the weak side and this was a Dolby SR (Spectral Recording) analog
theatrical release, so you are expected to play this in regular Dolby Pro
Logic, but even variants of Pro Logic II cannot help make this sound as good as
it did in the theater and from PCM 2.0 Stereo tracks on the old 12” letterboxed
LaserDisc. Hope the Blu-ray sounds and
looks better.
Extras include
a Michael Douglas interview, the original theatrical trailer and audio
commentary track with Schumacher, Douglas and many others involved with the
making of the film.
- Nicholas Sheffo
