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Average User Score: 8 (32 sources)

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Lynxan1

-1

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If ever there's a movie that is at it's heart the fantasy of the working man, this would be at the top of the list.

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Posted sep 7, 2007 9:27 am pt

Mads13

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One of my all time favorite Michael Douglas movies. It's a great commentary on modern society. Michael plays such a nasty, violent character, but everything he lashes out at are very relate-able. From false advertising to gang members to...
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One of my all time favorite Michael Douglas movies. It's a great commentary on modern society. Michael plays such a nasty, violent character, but everything he lashes out at are very relate-able. From false advertising to gang members to construction to bigots. He's almost living out many Americans' fantasies, when all he really wants to do is 'go home'.

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Posted apr 19, 2007 12:55 pm pt

NoOneIsAlone

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Good film actually. It was very entertaining and interesting, and overall it was not such a bad film. I really like Michael Douglas and his style in this movie was cool, I really like the way he acts and the way he does what he has to do. I really...
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Good film actually. It was very entertaining and interesting, and overall it was not such a bad film. I really like Michael Douglas and his style in this movie was cool, I really like the way he acts and the way he does what he has to do. I really like everything from the plot, the cast and the directing, this movie was not boring.

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Posted mar 2, 2007 2:20 pm pt

hoffman9102

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All he wants is simple...clear the path, Bill wants to go HOME. Yet nothing could be more complicated on a day like his, as he is overpriced, underappreciated and ganged up on for the last time. When the world turns its' back on 'D-Fens', he turns...
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All he wants is simple...clear the path, Bill wants to go HOME. Yet nothing could be more complicated on a day like his, as he is overpriced, underappreciated and ganged up on for the last time. When the world turns its' back on 'D-Fens', he turns his back on the world.

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Posted feb 18, 2007 10:47 am pt

ghangiskhan1

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One of the greatest movies of all time. Period.

In this movie, Bill "D-Fens" Foster is just a normal guy in hot L.A. traffic. But Bill Foster just can't take it anymore. He just leaves his car and starts walking home. As...
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One of the greatest movies of all time. Period.

In this movie, Bill "D-Fens" Foster is just a normal guy in hot L.A. traffic. But Bill Foster just can't take it anymore. He just leaves his car and starts walking home. As he walks home, which is quite a ways, he gets more and more frustrated with his surroundings and the people around him that he takes out all his problems with violence. Turns out, he and his wife are divorced and she had a restraining order put on him so he can't get near her, but he wants to go see his daughter because it's her birthday. At the same time, a detective officer on his last day at work, hears about this madman and sets off to stop him.
This movie is definitely worth seeing, one of the best I've ever seen. It stars Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall.

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Posted feb 15, 2007 10:21 am pt

• [+] San Francisco Chronicle
  
  100
  A few times every year, Hollywood makes a mistake, violates formula and actually makes a great picture. Falling Down is one of the great mistakes of 1993, a film too good and too original to win any Oscars but one bound to be remembered in years to come as a true and ironic statement about life in our time. [26 Feb 1993, p.D1]

  by Mick LaSalle | Read Full Review »
• [+] The New York Times
  
  90
  Falling Down is the most interesting, all-out commercial American film of the year to date, and one that will function much like a Rorschach test to expose the secrets of those who watch it.

  by Vincent Canby | Read Full Review »
• [+] Empire
  
  80
  While the morality of D-Fens methods are questionable, there's a resonance about his reaction to everyday annoyances, and Michael Douglas' hypnotic performance makes it memorable.

  by Philip Thomas | Read Full Review »
• [+] TV Guide
  
  75
  These adventures would be offensive if you could take them seriously, so it's probably good that you can't. Despite a nicely understated performance from Robert Duvall as a cop on Douglas's trail, Falling Down fails to convince on any level.

  by Staff (Not Credited) | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Sun-Times
  
  75
  Falling Down does a good job of representing a real feeling in our society today. It would be a shame if it is seen only on a superficial level.

  by Roger Ebert | Read Full Review »
• [+] Rolling Stone
  
  75
  Schumacher could have exploited those tabloid headlines about solid citizens going berserk. Instead, the timely, gripping Falling Down puts a human face on a cold statistic and then dares us to look away.

  by Peter Travers | Read Full Review »
• [+] Washington Post
  
  70
  Douglas's intentionally robotic -- and intense -- performance holds its own. He's scary, normal and funny all at once.

  by Desson Howe | Read Full Review »
• [+] Wall Street Journal
  
  70
  The filmmakers aren't out to make a crisp action fantasy like the vigilante movies of the 1970s. Their disaffected man has no specific enemy or at least not one that he acknowledges; modern life is his enemy. This realization hits him one day and he begins to act on it, spontaneously. He's an existential vigilante. [25 Feb 1993, p.A12]

  by Julie Salamon | Read Full Review »
• [+] Time
  
  70
  It's hard to know how to respond to Falling Down: deplore its crudeness or admire its shrewdness. But it is occasionally the movies' job to plunge into the national psyche, root around in its chaotic darkness and return to the surface with some arresting fantasy that helps bring our uglier imaginings into focus. In that sense, this often vulgar and exploitative movie has some value. [1 March 1993, p63]

  by Richard Corliss | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Reader
  
  70
  None of the characters ever rises beyond the level of his or her generic functions, and by the end the overall emptiness of the conception becomes fully apparent.

  by Jonathan Rosenbaum | Read Full Review »
• [+] ReelViews
  
  63
  Sure, the viewer who wants to see a tightly-paced thriller with gun-play and emotionally-satisfying moments won't be disappointed, but there is a little more here than simple escapism. Although it takes a number of wrong turns, Falling Down still has the power to disturb.

  by James Berardinelli | Read Full Review »
• [+] Austin Chronicle
  
  50
  D-FENS is a cut-out, a cartoon Everyman we're supposed to feel sorry for and can't. He's a bad parody in what will doubtless be an over-analyzed film about loss of control. It's just too bad nobody on the creative end seems to have had much control either.

  by Marc Savlov | Read Full Review »
• [+] Washington Post
  
  50
  Douglas again takes on the symbolic mantle of the Zeitgeist. But in Falling Down, he and Schumacher want to have their cake and eat it too; they want him to be a hero and a villain, and it just won't work.

  by Hal Hinson | Read Full Review »
• [+] Boston Globe
  
  50
  Slickly directed by Joel Schumacher, who sees that each and every button in this unabashedly manipulative film is pushed hard, Falling Down could have been deeply disturbing if it weren't so cartoony, so determined to glibly escape the moral consequences of the vicarious white-rampage fantasies to which it caters. [26 Feb 1993, p.25]

  by Jay Carr | Read Full Review »
• [+] Seattle Post-Intelligencer
  
  50
  The film probably should have been a comedy. It would be a lot more cathartic - and a lot more entertaining - to laugh at the grim modern world of Falling Down than it is to have a heavy-handed filmmaker rub our faces in the hopelessness of it all. [26 Feb 1993, p.14]

  by William Arnold | Read Full Review »