Discuss Falling Down

Do you folks truly believe that William Foster would have killed Adele, like Detective Prendergast insinuated? I ask this because when he said that to Foster, I felt like it was unwarranted for his character. Yes, he is definitely off-kilter, and may have a screw loose, but I never got the impression that he would kill his daughter. With his ex-wife, Beth, maybe he was angry with her, but I do not feel he would even kill her. Sure, he made the comment over the phone about how in some countries, it was still legal to kill one's wife for insulting their husband, but I think that was just to scare her. In the old VHS/Betamax videotapes he was watching at the house, it seems that he can get a temper, however he had no history of physically assaulting his wife or daughter, according to the questions asked by the cop that came to Beth's house. The family dog wasn't afraid of him either. lol

Throughout the film, he seems like a moderately sane person, who just has had a very, very rough day dealing with crazy, violent people. He used logic and reasoning with the myriad of people that he encountered on his way "home". They all seemed far more unstable and prone to violence than him, in my view. He tried to protect the kid while shooting the bazooka under the ground at the construction site. When Foster encountered the people in the backyard, he was extremely apologetic, thinking he had hurt the little girl, even though it was his own blood that got on her. He seemed insulted when they thought he was going to harm them, saying something to the effect of, "You think I want to hurt you? I have a little girl too." While walking across the golf course, he peacefully said he'd just be passing through quickly, until the old guy hit a golf ball straight at him. That could make any rational person snap.

I just didn't see him as an unstable person who would kill his daughter, wife, and then himself. I mean, those gang members shot at him, trying to kill him during the drive-by, and all he did was take the gun and shoot on of them in the leg (a non fatal shot). When Sandra was trying to capture him at the house, he wounded her, but didn't kill her. I'm sure he could have, considering all the guns he had at his disposal. The only person he actually killed was Nick, the Nazi store owner, and that could be easily seen as a self-defense kill (no pun intended). He even told the guy something like, "I am just disagreeing with you. We have that right as Americans." To me this shows that he was willing to be civil, even with someone as extreme as that. It illustrated to me that he was not a psychotic man capable of a double murder suicide as Prendergast asserted. What did you all think?

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Detective Predergast doesn't understand Mr. Foster any better than anybody else does, he was just trying to talk him down. Foster probably wouldn't have harmed his family, despite being angry at his wife. The myriad things you pointed out, all indicate that Foster wasn't as 'blindly psychotic' as he's made out to be. That's probably also part of the illustration of the culture being so... unbalanced?

The movie shows his world to be so unbearable and grueling, and yet the world expects everybody in it to just grind through it and not to act out in any way. When he acts out, he's labeled as crazy, but he's doing things that plenty of reasonable folks have probably thought of doing. Think of the scene with the 'unnecessary construction.' How many times has there been unnecessary construction, or five guys standing around watching one guy do the work? I've personally seen it quite a bit. How deliciously cruel and fun would it be to just find that construction site and blow it the fuck up?

Foster wasn't completely crazy, he had been pushed too far. And the world within the film couldn't even grasp that. It needed to think that it was perfect, and the problem lay with him.

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