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movie review - Falling Down

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

For Movie Night, The Boy and I watched this now thirty-year-old Hollywood flick about a mentally and emotionally disturbed individual who - get this - attempts to walk across Los Angeles. Set in the then-current early nineties, it shows the beginning of the era of decadence and decay that we've all come to enjoy but which still somewhat novel in those long-lost times. Gangs controlling the streets. Deranged men killing their wives over their own short-comings. Discarded workers worth more dead than alive. Toxins in the water. White nationalists. Wealth inequality.

The point of the movie, as expressed by the cop who pieces things together and successfully avoids a tragedy says, "You're mad because they lied to you? Listen pal, they lie to everyone. They lie to the fish. But that doesn't give you any right to do what you did today." Amen.

Recommended.