Falling Down - Just a normal day
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Falling Down - Just a normal day |
| Original title | Falling down |
 | |
| Country of production | USA , France , UK |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1993 |
| length | 107 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Joel Schumacher |
| script | Ebb Roe Smith |
| production |
Arnold Kopelson Timothy Harris Herschel Weingrod |
| music | James Newton Howard |
| camera | Andrzej Bartkowiak |
| cut | Paul Hirsch |
| occupation | |
| |
Falling Down is a 1993 American film . The director was Joel Schumacher , the script was written by Ebbe Roe Smith . The leading roles played Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall .
The plot of the film follows the main character William Foster, known as D-Fens (English pun with "defense"), on his increasingly violent walk through Los Angeles to his daughter's birthday party, while he is repeatedly involved in incidents that will show him the social problems of society. His reactions to the provocations and injustices turn out to be more and more angry and violent.
action
The criminal investigator Sergeant Martin Prendergast is about to retire early - it is his last day at work. His supervisor, Captain Yardley, half-heartedly tries to persuade him to stay longer with the LAPD . Prendergast emphasizes that with his retirement he wants to fulfill his sick wife's wish for more rest. Yardley doesn't like Prendergast very much, describes him as a good cop, but is only superficially familiar with his family circumstances, and he only tries to persuade him because he is expected to be according to the regulations.
On his last day, Prendergast is only entrusted with a seemingly insignificant case of coercion in a Korean grocery store, which puzzles him because the perpetrator demolished the store with a baseball bat but paid the purchase price for a can of Coca-Cola. The perpetrator took the weapon originally used for self-defense of the shopkeeper. A little later, the description of the man given by the shopkeeper fits a suspect involved in several incidents across town. Prendergast discovers that the same man had left his car in the middle of a traffic jam a few hours earlier. He continues to investigate, only his colleague Sandra Torres helps him with his work.
The owner of the abandoned Chevette car with the license plate “D-Fens”, William Foster, worked for an armaments company and was fired about a month earlier. He lives separately from his ex-wife Elizabeth, who has obtained a judicial ban on contact , but is on the way to her and their daughter to give the child a birthday present. In a troubled neighborhood, Foster gets into an argument with two members of a Latino youth gang. He beats the young men who want to evict him from their turf and want to take the briefcase with the baseball bat. Both flee and want to shoot Foster from a car a little later , but have an accident and are seriously injured. Foster takes a submachine gun and a sports bag with other weapons from them, shoots one of the youths in the leg and continues walking through the city. He would like to order breakfast in a fast food restaurant. But since breakfast time has been over for a few minutes and the lunch menu is now valid without exception, he forces the branch manager with the MP to serve him and fires a few shots into the ceiling. On the way Foster tries repeatedly to reach his ex-wife by phone. The line is busy for a long time when trying to call again. Foster he gets angry about a complaining passer-by and destroys the phone booth with a burst of fire from his MP. When he wants to buy hiking boots in a military store, the shopkeeper hides him from Officer Torres, even though the latter asks him about Foster with an accurate description of the person. However, the owner covers him because he has listened to the police radio and is in the picture. He believes the two share the same fascist tendencies, especially towards diverse minorities such as homosexuals and blacks. When it becomes clear that this is not the case, the shopkeeper tries to handcuff Foster and hand him over to the police. However, Foster defends himself with the butterfly knife that he took from one of the Latinos when he first met, and shoots the man. He calls his ex-wife from the shop and tells her that he is now on a path with no return - similar to a spaceship crew with broken ground contact. She is now alarmed. When on his further journey - Foster is now in military clothing - he is not allowed to pass through what he considers to be an unnecessary road construction site, Foster unceremoniously blows up the construction site with an M72 anti-tank weapon, which he also took from the military shop. He crosses the golf course of a fine country club, causes a heart attack in a frightened member and breaks into a villa property.
Prendergast tries to convince his work colleagues that the incidents involve the same dangerous perpetrator. However, they do not take his suspicions seriously; rather, his immediate superior sends him back to his desk and tells him that he really can't stand him. In his opinion, Prendergast has avoided working on the street for years and is therefore not a real police officer in his eyes. Investigating further on his own, Prendergast finds out that Foster is on the way to his ex-wife and daughter, with whom he is not allowed to have any contact at the instigation of his ex-wife, but who is celebrating her birthday that day. Just before he reaches the house, Elizabeth sneaks out of the house with her daughter. Then Foster looks at some old video tapes and reminiscing, and it comes on the possible refuge of the two - a pier in Venice Beach near their house. When he is surprised by the arriving officers Prendergast and Torres, he injures Torres with a shot and goes to the pier, where it comes to a clash with ex-wife and daughter. Prendergast reaches the pier, which has just been cleared by the police, a few moments later and, through a trick, manages to disarm D-Fens' ex-wife, whereupon the woman and the daughter flee. In a short dialogue Prendergast wants to get Foster to give up. However, he prefers to die in order to support his daughter on the basis of his life insurance. Therefore, Foster stages a shooting duel "like in a Western" by fooling Prendergast into carrying another weapon.
In the duel, Foster is shot by Prendergast. Then the other weapon turns out to be a water pistol that Foster had taken on the way to provoke the planned suicide by cops . When Captain Yardley, who did not support Prendergast in his investigation, is interviewed by journalists and attests that his sergeant did an excellent job in front of the media , Prendergast comments with a dry "lick my ass, Captain!"
Soundtrack
The music was composed by James Newton Howard .
| No. | title |
|---|---|
| 1. | 110 freeway |
| 2. | South Central |
| 3. | Miracle Mile |
| 4th | Hollywood |
| 5. | West LA |
| 6th | Santa Monica |
| 7th | Venice |
| 8th. | pier |
| 9. | Pacific Ocean |
| 10. | Closing theme from "Falling Down" |
synchronization
The German-language synchronization was created by Deutsche Synchron in Berlin.
| Actress | German dubbing voice | role |
|---|---|---|
| Michael Douglas | Volker Brandt | William "D-Fens" Foster |
| Robert Duvall | Hartmut Reck | Detective Martin Prendergast |
| Barbara Hershey | Kerstin Sanders-Dornseif | Elizabeth Travino |
| Rachel Ticotin | Bettina Spier | Detective Sandra Torres |
| DW Moffett | Martin Keßler | Detective Lydecker |
| Raymond J. Barry | Jürgen Thormann | Captain Yardley |
| Tuesday Weld | Regina Lemnitz | Amanda Prendergast |
| Karina Arroyave | Monica Bielenstein | Angie |
| Steve Park | Sven Hasper | Detective Brian |
| Kimberly Scott | Eva Kryll | Detective Jones |
| James Kean | Eberhard Prüter | Detective Keene |
| Richard Montoya | Bernd Vollbrecht | Detective Sanchez |
| Lois Smith | Hannelore Fabry | Mrs. Foster - William's mother |
criticism
The film received mostly positive reviews, scoring 73% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 49 reviews and a Metascore of 56% on Metacritic based on 21 reviews.
James Berardinelli described the first half of the film as "effective" on ReelViews . The emotionally unstable William (Bill) Foster is opposed to the emotionally stable Martin Prendergast . Berardinelli went on to say that the film was full of gallows humor so that it could almost be classified as a black comedy. According to the critic, one of the most shocking scenes in the film is the one in which a young child shows Bill how to use a grenade launcher.
“Realistic description of excesses and grievances, which in the increasingly compromise and routine staging inextricably mixed with racist elements and social prejudices of all kinds. In its primarily emotional argumentation, the film is less able to remedy the fatality of the situation than it is to promote it. "
“The very black humor satire is probably the best film by Joel Schumacher (...). In 1993 the film was accused of showing a white middle class, whose frustration was discharged in a 'fascist' rampage. Conclusion: The definitive end of the American dream. "
The Wiesbaden film evaluation agency awarded the production the rating “valuable”.
Awards
Ebbe Roe Smith won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for the script . The film was nominated for the Palme d'Or in 1993; Andrzej Bartkowiak was nominated for a prize at the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography in Łódź in Poland for his camera work .
Musical cultural references
In 2011, the American rock band Foo Fighters used the film as a template for the music video for their single Walk . The song Man on the Edge by the band Iron Maiden from the 1995 album The X Factor is about the film.
Web links
- Falling Down - An ordinary day in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Falling Down - An ordinary day at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- Falling Down - An ordinary day at Metacritic (English)
- Falling Down - A completely normal day in the online film database
Individual evidence
- ↑ Falling down. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing index , accessed on February 7, 2018 .
- ↑ Falling Down - A normal day at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- ↑ Falling Down - A normal day at Metacritic (English)
- ↑ James Berardinelli : Falling Down (United States, 1993). A movie review… ReelViews, accessed August 31, 2016 .
- ↑ Falling Down - Just a normal day. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Falling Down - A completely normal day on cinema.de
- ↑ Falling Down - A completely normal day on fbw-filmbassy.com