He keeps walking. During the course of his day he will meet, and confront, Latino gang members who want to steal his briefcase, fast food workers who tell him it's too late for breakfast, a neo-Nazi gun-shop owner, and other characters who seem placed in his way to fuel his anger.
Eventually he comes to the attention of the police, as Prendergast (Robert Duvall), a cop in his last day on the job, puts together scattered reports to deduct that the same goofy white guy is causing a series of disturbances. Prendergast is, in his own way, an example of the same syndrome afflicting the Douglas character. He feels impotent, unnecessary, obsolete. His superior officer tells him frankly he is sick of him. The story builds to a final confrontation between Douglas and Duvall - between a man who has snapped, and a man who has held together, under many of the same pressures. If this film had been made 10 or 20 years ago, it might have been an audience-pleaser in which we cheered as the white hero shot up druggies, or got vengeance on rapists. Schumacher and his screenwriter, Ebbe Roe Smith, have not made a revenge movie, and the film isn't constructed to inspire cheers when Douglas pulls the trigger. Maybe it will play that way for some audiences, but more thoughtful viewers are likely to pick up on Douglas's anomie - his soul-sickness that has turned to madness, his bafflement at becoming obsolete and irrelevant.
Because the character is white, and many of his targets are not, the movie could be read as racist. I prefer to think of it as a reflection of the real feelings of a lot of people who, lacking the insight to see how political and economic philosophies have affected them, fall back on easy scapegoating. If you don't have a job and the Korean shop owner does, it is easy to see him as the villain. It takes a little more imagination to realize that you lost your job because of the greedy and unsound financial games of the go-go junk bond years.
What is fascinating about the Douglas character, as written and played, is the core of sadness in his soul. Yes, by the time we meet him, he has gone over the edge. But there is no exhilaration in his rampage, no release. He seems weary and confused, and in his actions he unconsciously follows scripts that he may have learned from the movies, or on the news, where other frustrated misfits vent their rage on innocent bystanders.
Nor does Schumacher build to some kind of easy audience-pleasing climax. The way the movie ends is the way it must, in real life - not the way it would in "Death Wish VII." And the values and style of the Duvall character reflect, not a triumphant cop, but simply a guy who still believes in trying to roll with the punches and make the best of things. "Falling Down" does a good job of representing a real feeling in our society today. It would be a shame if it is seen only on a superficial level.
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