9 Movie Villains Who Are Really The Victims

6. William Foster in Falling Down

He€™s a man who terrorises a city. He wrecks stores, beats people up, kills a man or two and even blows up a construction site with a bazooka on route back to his family. Only one cop can stop him, leading to a standoff on a pier when the terrorist is shot down and the city seems to be safe. Everything looks pretty clear. The police cop is the good guy hunting down the man causing grievous bodily harm across the streets of Los Angeles (the bad guy). But William Foster is different. William Foster is just like us. Foster is the victim of the hustle and bustle of society all being just too much. The traffic jams. The people who pester you on the street. The price of a can of Coke. We€™ve all expressed anger at mundane things like these. Hell, the main reason I was told to watch Falling Down was because I€™ve had the exact same experience Foster does at the Whammy Burger restaurant (albeit without the machine gun, but in failing to give me a breakfast menu bacon sandwich, the server at Subway didn€™t take too kindly to me ordering a BLT instead, then asking him to remove the LT). Foster just happens to keep being pushed by all the little things as the day goes along. He sits down on a hill and a gang threatens him. After fending them off, the gang comes after him. When they fail, he takes their weapons and is forced to use them when a store owner goes crazy on him. The end of the film clearly lays out that Foster€™s rampage isn€™t completely justified. The ills of society aren€™t quite an acceptable excuse for what Foster does on the whole, but on a really really bad day, are his actions too different from what we would do (or at least want to)?