10 Movies Where Every Character Thinks They're The Hero

Joel Schumacher's mesmerising black comedy Falling Down stars Michael Douglas as Bill Foster, a divorced, unemployed man who becomes increasingly infuriated with the urban rot he sees unfold around him while walking through Los Angeles.

Foster simply wants to make it to his ex-wife's house in time for his daughter's birthday party, but ends up encountering myriad infuriating scenarios, ranging from getting stuck in sweltering traffic to being accosted by gang-bangers, and eating some profoundly underwhelming fast food.

As sympathetic as Foster is to a point, he obviously takes things too far once he gets violent - a point cemented in the film's climax when he asks cop Martin Prendergast (Robert Duvall), "I'm the bad guy?"

Up until then, Bill saw himself as an emblem for the embattled "regular guy" - in Foster's context, a regular white guy - simply trying to make a living and provide for his family. He failed to see how his own rage at his undesirable place in society could possibly be part of the problem.

On the flip-side Sgt. Prendergast is the closest thing the movie has to a typical hero, but even many of the movie's more deplorable characters clearly see themselves as "right."

Take the gang-bangers, who view Foster walking through "their" territory as a personal affront - that he's doing something deeply offensive by encroaching upon their turf, and they need to teach him a lesson for it.

Hell, even Nick (Frederic Forrest), the repugnant Neo-Nazi Foster crosses paths with and eventually kills, is utterly unrepentant in viewing non-whites and Jews as sub-human, and believes himself absolutely correct for thinking this way.

But fundamentally, Falling Down's message is that the modern day capitalistic rat race does a disservice to pretty much everyone, pitting us against each other and bringing out the worst in us all.