Falling Down 1993

Caryn James, New York Times: It turns one man's slide toward madness into a wickedly mischievous, entertaining suspense thriller. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: None of the characters ever rises beyond the level of his or her generic functions, and by the end the overall emptiness of the conception becomes fully apparent. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Falling Down is a brutally manipulative revenge fantasy, a piece of comic-strip demagoguery that teeters uneasily on the brink of satire. Read more

David Ansen, Newsweek: A real artist could make something incisive or darkly hilarious out of this moral tightrope act. Schumacher, veering recklessly between social satire, kick-ass fantasy and damsel-in-distress melodrama, plays the game for opportunistic cheap thrills. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Although it takes a number of wrong turns, Falling Down still has the power to disturb. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The film ... is actually about a great sadness which turns into madness, and which can afflict anyone who is told, after many years of hard work, that he is unnecessary and irrelevant. Read more

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: Let's face it, there is an element of truth in the character of D-FENS. But it is, finally, tabloid truth. Read more

Time Out: Sometimes funny, sometimes touching, and certainly unnerving. Read more

Variety Staff, Variety: At first comes across like a mean-spirited black comedy and then snowballs into a reasonably powerful portrait of social alienation. The tone is unremittingly dour, however. Read more

Brian Lowry, Variety: Read more

Hal Hinson, Washington Post: Unfortunately, it continues on through an uninspired series of cartoonishly brutal social insults, each one growing more lethal than the next, thereby justifying an increasingly lethal response. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: Douglas's intentionally robotic -- and intense -- performance holds its own. He's scary, normal and funny all at once... Read more