Rating of
3/4
"Falling Down" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 04/07/12
With direction from king of the hacks Joel Schumacher and starring Michael Douglas, I really shouldn't like this film but it is easily Douglas' best role. Normally I find him arrogant, self obsessed and utterly unsympathetic. Here, as an average Joe suffering a mental break, feeling under siege from the modern world he is actually pretty damn good. He adeptly walks the tightrope between garnering sympathy for his inability to cope with where his life has taken him and the underlying menace of his psychotic tendencies with genuine subtlety. Unfortunately this subtlety is lost in Schumacher's direction which schizophrenically veers between showing him as an ordinary man doing the things we'd all like to do once in a while and showing him as a dangerous lunatic. The script however contains plenty of black humour, and you can't help but cheer him on as he makes a stand against the hypocrisies of everyday life we are all faced with. It doesn't really make any coherent social point but it's an entertainingly off beat thriller that although lacking in any real tension, is different enough to stand out from the crowded marketplace of Hollywood thrillers.
