Falling Down is a film that I love, despite feeling like I morally shouldn't. It's a guilty pleasure to say I enjoy a film in which a man who has lost it all is slowly consumed by his madness, then wreaks havoc upon those who briefly act as an inconvenience in his day.
William Foster (Michael Douglas) is a now unemployed and recently divorced middle-aged man; it's his daughters birthday and he hopes to attend her party and be a good father, but his day doesn't start out particularly well -- his car breaks down on the Los Angeles Highway, forcing him to ditch it by the road and start a walk across the city.
What I love about Falling Down is that it makes the viewer feel for William Foster, he can very easily be perceived as the hero that is finally saying enough to the city's degeneracy that infests it, punishing those who get in his way during his trek to the party. William Foster can be perceived as a vigilante, as well as the victim.
Our protagonist looks down upon the world of capitalism: those who are in poverty, low-paying fast-food workers, and immigrants with not-so-great jobs, it makes him feel unwelcome, in a city that is displaying nothing but hate as it lives in its recluse, depressive state. The problem is that William Foster is a victim of capitalism, as is everyone else, but he is taking it out on those who are just as caught up it as he is.
Falling Down is simply a story that shows what can happen to anyone once all is lost; once someone is staring into an empty future; a future that seems to only fall even further into nothingness. It shows how someone can just crack and ascend into madness as they want nothing but to escape the nothingness they feel trapped in. It's an act of desperation. An act to free themselves from society, by punishing society.
