Seek help.

I really didn't like him...until he let golfer die.😂

😂 real talk

He's crazy AND makes some good points 😊

​@@bobcobb3654He's frustrated with society. Seek help if you aren't, society is shit

you missed the real message of this movie

@@RC-go2klwhich was?

​@@RoloT007 I watched this again few years ago, and I realized this guy was a bad person all along. In the beginning we learn that he is flawed (not perfect) his action was in the face of dangers, but though his action led to more depraved stuff like stalking his wife and daughter, so goes beyond the one-day mythos that I believe the movie might have been pitched as when it came out (namely Roger Ebert) but I think it goes deeper than that.

The real message was: It doesn't matter what time of day, if Mike Douglas orders breakfast, you give him BREAKFAST!

Yeah, he did. The *real* message of this movie is that you're an idiot.

Best of Michael Douglas 🫶🏾🫶🏾🫶🏾🫶🏾🫶🏾🫶🏾

I loved this movie because it came out what I was fairly young and it was like nothing I had ever seen before. I love the way Micheal Douglas looked so different than anything else he was in previous. An amazingly shocking movie.

Douglas was made to do this movie. It’s his best.

​@@jjcaron72 The Game was also a masterpiece

I always thought the whammy burger scene was dumb because nobody goes to McDonald's because the burgers look good but because they taste good.

"Burger shop" lol. I once translated butcher shop as "meat shop" in Spanish class and my teacher got a chuckle out of it.

So you're an asshole?

This guy would have a field day if he was exposed to how bad customer service has become in 2024.

Think we've all had a falling down moment in maccies. 😊

I’m irrelevant

@@TOCC50 "Not Economically Viable....."

Military Contractor indeed

I always thought it was intentional, as if she was meant to look like she was secretly cheering on the D Fens character. It's realistic. More young girls than boys fantasize about a Bonnie and Clyde scenario.

Couldn’t care less*

You could even say she finds him highly attractive for the way he's ordering her boss around and she loves it. The fact that it was just an actress who just couldn't stop giggling makes this whole scene feel so much more natural.

Sorry about the golf, you can quit or get help.

You're right. Thank goodness I'm not an insufferable jerk; that's incurable. Hope you're doing well with it!

Nobody got offended in the 90s. This narrator must be talking about the soft society of today.

​@@richdouglas2311😒

Please don’t die wearing a stupid little hat

My life is over

I love the idea of a family having inside jokes about Falling Down.

What's refreshing is the fact the character is black, they & didn't put him as another middle aged white guy having a meltdown. It just showed that it was men from a particular era that had no place.

@@Zerofightervi true. Easily could have been a total clone but they did something different. And it fits well with the army surplus store scene when D-Fens clearly shows he's not a racist. D-Fens seems not economically viable as a kindred spirit not someone less than himself. It's possible that's why, symbolically speaking, the two are dressed the same. Maybe D-fens sees NEV but is just imagining them dressed the same?

@@asa-punkatsouthvinland7145 I'm rewatching it as I type this message. It's a film full of little nods to a similar theme. Getting old. Dct Prendergast is belittled throughout is last day on the police force, you get the sense he wasn't taken all that seriously throughout his career. His wife who struggles with getting old having been a looker in her younger years. The Nev not being ' economically viable ' probably due to his age . In a way the Army surplus guy is someone struggling with a world that's left his bigoted views behind that would have been more popular in his youth. It's a great film & it's one that definitely deserves it's cult following.

@@Zerofightervi agreed. It's an amazing & deep film. One can also see how at films start we are, as an audience, are meant to sympathize with D-fens. He's relatable & standing up for himself. But bit by bit through the film we get hints that maybe he isn't so good. He apparently was at times verbally harsh to his exwife (although exwife clearly says he wasn't physically violent), he does assault people and hold the burger place hostage at gun point. Etc. at the end even D-fens asks "I'm the bad guy? How'd that happen??" We still hold sympathy for the man but also might question if he was really justified. If he's a hero or a villan: and what that means for us the audience in that we cheered for him. Rather morally thought-provoking! It's just an amazing film that really deserves it's praise as you said.

@@Zerofightervi And the two men were dressed exactly the same - white shirt, dark striped tie and dark slacks. Ignoring skin color, they could have been the same person.

Giving what to that man?

@@ozymandiasultor9480 "the man" as in society.

@@kevinpaynter So, giving to the society... Giving sh*t? Like, society was bad then? If that is the case today there should be revolutions going on all over the globe.

@@kevinpaynter You mean "sticking it to the man."

Me as well. 👍👍

That! That is a movie I'd LOVE to see, and one they'll never make. I can see her working that job for years, only ever getting bit parts in commercials. Everytime she goes into an acting gig they suggest she has more work done, to the point where her medical debt is bigger than her student loans. Years go by and she's assistant manager, but she hates her job, her crummy apartment, her life. She's not able to see her own son. She goes into an acting gig and one of the jerks that kept telling her to get work done hires an actor because she's an activist but has no skill as an actor and is a crap human being and looks a lot worse than her. That's when she loses it.

The sequal was made. It's called "They Live". "Falling Down" is the exact scenario government and law enforcement in general think is boiling just under the surface of every single civilian, and could erupt at any moment if not for their vigilant benevolent yet brutal control. They couldn't rationalize their behavior any other way. The saying "the thin blue line", the second half of which is "...is all that stands between society and chaos" is the mantra they tell themselves to justify nearly any atrocity. If you read this and scoff, it's only because you have avoided being targeted, either because you activity totally submit, or just by chance haven't experienced the authentic treatment by "the system". And if you don't believe that, you're in the second camp and there's still hope for you. You're one police interaction away from seeing the truth. If you're in the former camp, there is no judgement, just acknowledge the actual state of things.

@@Carnyx_1 Actually I would say Teotor Burger and Teotor City could be the result of Sheila's breakdown, a dystopian world where criminals are used as meat and handed out to the homeless in an overpopulated America. If you haven't seen them I highly recommend, brought to you by the production company Bloody Disgusting, the folks behind Art The Clown and the Terrifier series so you know the gore is going to be over-the -top brutality that could almost be pornographic on a sick and twisted level.

Or the creepy manager pulls some harassment on her, she sues Whammy Burger for tens of millions, wins and gets ownership. At that point she changes the policy to a more flex breakfast/lunch anytime menu. Pretty soon Sheila is a billionaire- she foresees this opportunity and that is why she is smiling.

I think it suited the scene. I agree, in that I just thought she didn't care because she hates her job and boss too.

Same here. I thought she just really hated her job and her manager, and was a little broken herself, so she thought the whole situation was the best thing she was ever going to see.

@@immikeurnotexactly

It captured what was happening all around me at the time. The idyllic suburb I grew up in was built in the early 60s for all the defense workers at the headquarters of McDonnell-Douglass during the height of the Cold War. Some of my friend's dads were D-Fens's. One was a good Christian man who later questioned the morality of his role in helping design weapons and things to protect America. In the early 90s the layoffs hit hard, my mom used to go to the "nicer" areas to hit all the garage sales as those people all took early retirement or found something else to do and were selling everything off and moving out in scores. 30 years ago it was a rather boring, 90% white suburb that was a nice place to raise a family. I rarely knew people who locked their doors. Today gunfire is often heard in the distance. But anyway the families I knew all made it through okay, because they were families. Many men of the time questioned their place in a changing world they didn't recognize anymore and didn't snap, as they had success in their personal lives and people to live for. D-Fens didn't have anybody. The failed relationship and failure as a father was his last straw in a world that seemed to keep disappointing him despite his best efforts, no matter how ineffective they progressively became. It could have just as easily been a movie about a guy who shoots up his former workplace though. It was definitely more universal than just being limited to defense workers. This was the time of NAFTA and outsourcing and downsizing and lots of American jobs disappearing. A guy like D-Fens was just too old to start over, "overeducated and underskilled," or maybe that's the other way around. Simply put, he wasn't Economically Viable. To the workforce, to women, and society overall. Old white guys were no longer necessary, they were no longer the target audience and no longer in demand. It's a very cautionary tale about a lot of things, really. Loyalty and respect and decency seemed important to D-Fens, and they seemed to be in short supply. The great Bobcat Goldthwait dark comedy "God Bless America" had a line about "what's the point of having a society if we're no longer interested in acting civilized?" Look at Los Angeles today, there are now 100 of the guy who lives in the park in every park. D-Fens was rightfully annoyed at the callous indifference and savagery around him. It's not just a cautionary tale about a guy who snaps but also about an entire city that stopped caring. It's why Prendergast's arc is so important, he decided he still cared. D-Fens wasn't able to. It actually ends rather hopeful despite the demise of D-Fens. Or because of it.

Why wasn’t a Super Nintendo game made about this movie?

@@SkollFaqHamasandAntifa You must be that one Blaze fanboy everyone talks about.

GREAT tune! And Skoll hasn't a clue about good music.

@@joconnell8145 True 'nuff. And Skoll's user name tells me that he's one of those Far Right cultists who still blame ANTIFA for J/6. Some of those nametags are just as bad as having a swastika tattoo, but at least they reveal themselves publicly making it easier to know whether or not to block them from further idiotic comments.

yeah, it made me think English isn't this guy's first language because every native English speaker would call it "Eight and a Half"

@@coletrickIe Aussies speak English too so that doesn't make any sense

Oscar-worthy, far as I'm concerned!

I was around the same age watching it late on a school night. I remember finding it so funny, and still do-to this day!

I saw it in the theater when it originally came out. I later bought the DVD several years later. Have always liked this film. Great performance by Douglas.

Yeah that guys life was changing a lot too, happens to be last day on the job, got the wife at home. I got the vibe he wasn’t really ready for retirement like, “what the hell am I going to do with my life now?”.

I saw Duvall's character the same as Douglas'. Just, different because of little que's in their lives that they dealt with differently. In each guy, they define their existences through their jobs. Duvall has an insane bitch for a wife, and Douglas looks to have had a family but is separated somehow, its not stated in the movie, just inferenced, because he's trying to get to his little girls birthday party. They each deal with characters through the day that push their buttons. Remember, its Duvall's last day before retirement. He doesn't want to do anything dangerous that could get him shot. Each character has to push through situations and characters that offer nothing but tension and enmity. By the time they meet on the pier, Duvall has lost his partner, his wife is beyond insane, & Douglas has been told by his wife to forget coming to their daughters birthday; even the sno-globe gets broken. How they both dealt with these problems is what sets them apart. Other than that, they were basically the same character. The "not viable" guy is just a "red herring" for Douglas that reinforces his viewpoint that the world is f***ed and he just wants to get off the merry-go-round. Duvall realizes his wife is insane, but prefers to hold on to her because of who, and what she represents in his life; stability in an insane world. Douglas only breaks at the end when he realizes, "I'm the bad guy?" It's almost cathartic that he dies, and gets flipped into the ocean, to be pulled out to sea. Devoured by the ocean.

@@stevenserna910 Also Prendergast's daughter is gone for good, dead, and he dealt with that completely differently.

Of the three, Joker is by far the most lacking in the ability to express a coherent message about people neglected by society and hierarchy. The idea that audiences might become sympathetic towards the main character is simply ludicrous. There is, even in the spectrum of alienated characters, a world of difference between an individual who fixates their resentments upon one individual, only to inadvertently find redemption through a selfless act for another; an 'economically unviable' man who begins to act out their frustrations in outbursts of destruction; and a person with mental illness who won't take their meds and allows free reign to their drives to become a serial killer whilst blaming everybody for their murder spree because they didn't laugh at his god-awful jokes. In Falling Down, D-Fens has a final revelation that he might have gone too far, and makes a decision to end the problem. The Joker character, in stark contrast, understands nothing about himself and learns nothing about himself, ending the film even more convinced of his wrong-headed perspective about why he should be seen as the true victim... as opposed to all the people he has murdered to achieve absolutely no positive change for the mentally-ill or himself, but a delusional sense of self-worth through negative attention.

William didn't become the worst person, towards the end of the film you learn that he was always the worst person. The guy was messed up in the head and violent towards his own family. He wasn't a product of society or of things that happened to him like you are trying to say. Yes the movie makes you think he is the product of society making a person snap but no, he was a psychopath that is a demented diva that wants things his way all the time. When you see the video playing on the tv where he is screaming at his family on his daughters birthday party, that is when you see that he is a monster, the bad guy. This is when you realize as a viewer that he was always the bad guy to begin with. Upon seeing this, I realized I was cheering for the wrong guy and that I hated William at the end and was glad he got killed.

Falling Down pulls too many punches to be on the same level as Taxi Driver. Joker has a great finale and Phoenix's performance is top notch, but it's too derivative of Scorsese and not quite as smart as it tries to be. It IS one of the best superhero genre movies of all time, though.

There are two kinds of people: those who identify with Dfens and live vicariously through his actions that they would never take, and those who live in fear that used and discarded men have the potential to actually lash out this way. The former just want some empathy, while the latter want to see us put in a cop car and taken away as is done to Not Economically Viable Man.

I think the journey is simply a surrogate goal for DFENS. It is something he can work towards and accomplish; he can make progress. He needs an accomplishment and has made an arbitrary choice in the gift for his daughter/seeing/getting to her. If nothing else, he will succeed at this one self assigned task. Consequences be damned this one is going in the "win" column.

Machiavelli teaches us that, It is better to be feared than to be loved, if one cannot be both.

It's also part of the story that no one around him had any empathy towards him. He's busy living up to what society expected, and the rest are all applying a different ideal upon him. Eventually he can't accomplish either.

Having known teenagers like that, who also think that nothing bad could ever happen to them, I totally agree with your assessment.

I can't agree more. There's a word called "Cut" that every director uses when someone ruins a scene. No chance that her giggling was unintentional. Throughout the film, the younger the person, the less they were afraid of Foster and actually tried to help him.

I interpreted it as she has a mundane boring job, but this turn of events injected some excitement into her day, so she was having fun. Everyone else was terrified of the gun, but she was having fun.

Because it's grimy. He's not a hero, we're watching actions and a situation but he is not special or good / bad. No Country also has characters that have skills, strengths and high points but none are "good" and even Anton isn't pure bad. They all are humans

All it takes is one bad day………….

He said that line with the feeling of betrayal behind it so well :_(

He wanted breakfast 🥚 🥪

Maybe they have some overlap - like they start serving lunch at 11:00 but they keep serving breakfast until 11:30.

yeah with chief wiggum having to solve the case and spotty teen working at Krusty burger

That's genius

Williams had been doing dramatic roles since the early ‘80s, though it’s true it would have been a new turn for him to play someone actually menacing if not an outright villain. I will say that as good as Williams was in those later roles, he maintained a certain nerdish quality, without the level of raw aggression that Michael Douglas exudes in this film. That’s not a criticism of the Williams performances, just a note that it was one way of making Williams believable as a darker character despite the fact that he’s not someone most people would consider naturally intimidating. All that said, I’m not surprised he was considered for the role of D-FENS, and it’s interesting to picture how he would have done in the role.

He could do anything.

Gen X, reporting for duty

@@aquariandawn4750 LOL me too. As for the wokeness, I think it's silly, but it doesn't get me bent out of shape. I just ignore it. If anyone insisted I use certain pronouns with them, I would just elect to never talk to them again, not worth my time. I'm getting the impression a lot of the behavior is just elaborate trolling. Something I did plenty of when I was younger.

@@jimmym3352 it's not people being woke that bothers me. It's what you just pointed out , they insist that you go along with it. In spite of me being conservative, I'm not straight, nor am I a Christian. I don't believe that anyone has to accept anyone else's sexual lifestyle, I just believe in tolerance and I also believe in the social norm. You'd never see me draped in rainbows and glitter and shoving signs and people's faces. In spite of me not being a Christian I support people's right here in this country freedom of religion. And I see the left has started a war on Christianity, and being against somebody's religion in this country is being un-American. These people don't want to be tolerated, they want you to do as they tell you to do, no matter how crazy it is. They want men to be in women's sports beating the fuck out of them. They want children on puberty blockers getting their genitals switched out. Oh hell I'm starting to preach... Yeah, I always understood D Fens.

What is wokeness?

@@fumanpoo4725 the opposite of common sense