Falling Down

Featuring a punchy title, Michael Douglas and the late, great Robert Duvall, Joel Schumacher's 1993 action drama Falling Down popped up on a streaming platform and I had been meaning to see what all the fuss was about. The late 1990s featured a lot suburban office workers discontent with their lives but this early '90s film takes a much starker look at the world through the bitter eyes of Douglas' William Foster. A role that he heralds as his favourite, and I can certainly see why.

Set over the course of a single very hot day in LA, William Foster is caught in a traffic jam which is not moving and so he abandons his car, quitting the queue everyone else finds themselves trapped in, including Duvall's police officer, but soon finds trouble in the world around him. 

Aside from the "it's out of order" phone booth scene, I knew very little about Falling Down and that is the best way to approach Schumacher's story which takes many twists and turns over the course of around 110 minutes. Douglas, Duvall and the rest of the cast are great and Schumacher's direction is on-point throughout which kept me hooked right through to the conclusion.

Falling Down is now seeing a new lease of life as it's been given the 4K treatment but the HD version I saw still looked very good. I would say though that this is one of those tense, darker films which might not warrant repeat viewings for all but I still had a great time, and can only imagine what Schumacher's Batman films might have been like if he took the same approach there instead of the campy treatment we received with the likes of Batman & Robin. Falling Down gets a strong recommendation from me.