5. Falling Down (1993)
William Foster (Michael Douglas) has the mother of all crack ups in this movie. Recently divorced with a restraining order, laid off from his job, the final straw for William is the air conditioning in his car going bust. He leaves his car and walks across Los Angeles to attend his daughter's birthday. At a grocery store he asks the owner for some change for the telephone. An exchange takes place that ends up with William bashing the crap out of the store with a baseball bat. He then ends up making enemies with a gang who try to do a drive by on him. Mercifully they miss William but manage to take down several bystanders. The gang crash the car and William takes a gun and shoots the remaining alive gang member. He picks up a bag of their weapons. When the staff in a fast food restaurant are being right d**kheads, William shoots his gun at the ceiling. He eventually gets to eat what he wants to eat but a detective is on his trail. Sergeant Prendergast is on his last day before retirement and is determined to look into William's crimes. William's vanity number plate gives him away and the detective is in a race against time when he realises William is headed for his family. They have plenty to fear. By now William is in army combat gear and armed with a rocket launcher. He accidentally wipes out a construction site. The whole thing climaxes when William meets up with his ex family and goads Prendergast into shooting him. There is nothing glorified or hero-ised in William Foster's crack up. It is instead, rather sad and driven by personal tragedy. Everything appears to be stereotyped - the Korean shop owner, the black gangs, the white supremacist - but this only adds to the film's realism and makes it more believable. Michael Douglas as William Foster is an everyman and I'm sure there are plenty of people who can identify with his frustration over both life's major events like divorce and redundancy, and also life's petty vexations that irk one immensely. A brilliant portrait of urban insanity which thrills to the last minute.