The GOOD, BAD, and the UGLY

Part 2

 

 

 

For my next story I am going to use "Falling Down", where Michael Douglas plays William Foster, a laid off Defense Dept. worker.

 

Foster loses his grip on sanity and defends himself against the world. He feels that everybody else is striving to make life hard for others, including himself, and he goes on a vendetta with small arms and even a small rocket launcher. He accuses a shop owner of robbing consumers by making prices so high, and ransacks the store's merchandise. He strikes back against guys who try to rob him, drive-by shooters who try to kill him; he comes across a closed off street where construction workers don't seem to care about the mess and inconvenience their slowed down work is causing commuters, complains about how they are inconsiderate toward the drivers who can't get to work on time because of them, etc., and fires a rocket at their tractor or crane or whatever it was. He walks across a private golf course used by upper class, snobby folks who look down on him, and he reacts by shooting their golf cart. One of the old men has a heart attack while his heart meds rush beyond his reach in the cart that the gunshot sent hurdling down the hill. He is heading toward his separated wife's home to reclaim her and his daughter, and he can't understand why she left him and doesn't want him in her life.

 

Meanwhile, Robert Duvall and his partner are tracking him down to stop the crimes of vengeance that Foster is committing across the city. In the end, unable to hold onto his daughter and his former life with his family, Foster finds himself held at bay by Duvall’s gun while the cop moves to arrest him. Foster makes a statement about the world being against him and him just trying to protect himself from the bad guys. Duvall gives him a speech about the wrongs of his actions, and suddenly Foster sees the light, yet he still can't understand it.

 

"You mean I'm the bad guy? How did that happen?"

He just couldn't grasp that idea; that although life is hard and we all felt his anger at times in our life, he simply can't strike back in the way that he did. He was convinced that the world around him was the villain, and it wasn't until a moment before he provoked his own death that he realized that his actions made him the villain.

 

I simply found that interesting. That is what made Falling Down a good film. Some of him is in all of us, only we don't declare war on the local McDonalds and shoot an automatic weapon into the ceiling because they won't serve us breakfast at five minutes into lunchtime.