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A TALE OF URBAN REALITY

In 1993, director Joel Schumacher (Flatliners) delivered one of the most provocative studio thrillers of the decade with Falling Down, a darkly comic, razor-sharp portrait of modern urban frustration starring Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall at their very best. On a sweltering Los Angeles morning, a man known only as "D-Fens" (Douglas) abandons his car in a gridlocked traffic jam and sets off across the city on foot. He just wants to go home, but his path is marred by increasing everyday irritations that escalate into explosive confrontations, leaving a trail of violence in his wake. Trying to piece together these events is veteran cop Prendergast (Duvall), whose quiet final day before retirement becomes a chaotic hunt for a dangerous man on the edge. As the paths of these two very different men converge, the question of whether D-Fens is a victim of an oppressive society, or a man showing his true colors becomes unavoidable. Shocking, darkly funny, and eerily prescient, Falling Down remains one of the most unforgettable portraits of rage in modern American cinema. Now restored in stunning 4K, this controversial cult classic looks sharper and hits harder than ever before.


4K ULTRA HD LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

• Brand new 4K restoration by Arrow Films approved by cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak
• 4K UHD (2160p) Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
• Newly restored original lossless stereo 2.0 and DTS-HD MA 4.0 surround audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Archival audio commentary by director Joel Schumacher, editor Paul Hirsch, screenwriter Ebbe Roe Smith, LA Times writer Shawn Hubler, and actors Michael Douglas, Michael Paul Chan, Vondie Curtis-Hall, and Frederic Forrest
• Man on the Edge, a brand new interview with screenwriter Ebbe Roe Smith
• At War with the World, a brand new interview with composer James Newton Howard
• Going Home, a brand new location featurette revisiting the real-life Los Angeles sites used in Falling Down
• Deconstructing D-Fens, an archival interview with Michael Douglas
• Original trailer
• Image gallery
• Collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by film critics Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Simon Ward

One of the WB library titles I most wanted Arrow to have a crack at, in all honesty. Glad we finally got there.

Great fun, probably Joel Schumacher's finest hour (though I do have a soft spot for The Client) and one of Michael Douglas' best too. More stuff like this please, Arrow. Big month for Robert Duvall heads.

Mainly because of the Robert Duvall character seeming very similar to Spencer Tracy's (i.e. always on the phone to his wife, and watching the rampage from a 'safe distance' until the finale), I now like thinking of this as the "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" of sociopolitical films!

(I guess that makes Michael Douglas the Jonathan Winters equivalent? Probably not Ethel Merman. )

The scene where he’s in the car and the traffic is getting to him, with James Newton Howard’s music amplifying the tension is so unbearably tense it clearly sets the tone for everything after it.

I wonder if that opening incident in Falling Down had a strange influence on adverts in the following years, or if things like the Carlsberg ad and the Prudential one were just tapping in to the same idea in the zeitgeist of traffic jams as the modern equivalent of purgatory!

(I suppose that this all came to a climax with Cronenberg's adaptation of Crash! Don DeLillo's novel Cosmopolis probably also put the cap on traffic jams as metaphors for a while)

And I suppose The Doom Generation (NSFW) did Falling Down's convenience store scene from the opposite way around!

This came out when my formerly chainsmoking boss was trying to give up, although he made the Michael Douglas character seem like the epitome of conciliatory reasonableness.

(I've rarely been more thrilled to see someone lighting up again, even though we shared an office.)