Falling Down (Blu-ray) (1993)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Audio Commentary Featurette-Deconstructing D-Fens: A Conversation With Michael Douglas Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1993
Running Time	112:36
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Joel Schumacher
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Michael Douglas Robert Duvall Rachel Ticotin Barbara Hershey Frederic Forrest Tuesday Weld
Case	Amaray Variant
RPI	?	Music	James Newton Howard

    "I'm the bad guy?"

    Despite what many would have us believe, the world and society that we live in has improved rather drastically over the past 150 or so years. Life expectancies have doubled, diseases that used to kill us in lots of thousands have been contained, and the total effort we expend on our own survival has sharply declined. I say this in context of this review because this improvement has come at a price, and how we meet that price is very much a part of the theme of Falling Down.

    Falling Down begins on a city street much like any other. With a few exceptions at the larger end of the scale, you have seen them all if you have seen one. What makes this particular city street different is that one of the drivers stuck in a traffic jam on it is about to lose his mind and take his frustrations out on a number of different people.

    Said driver, initially only known by his vanity license plate that reads D-FENS (Michael Douglas in a riveting performance), looks like any regular office worker. Telling one witness that he is going home, he abandons his car in the middle of the road and walks off in a seemingly random direction.

    Meanwhile, a detective by the name of Prendergast (Robert Duvall) is enjoying his last day as a detective at the local police precinct. As D-FENS angrily argues his points with an ever-increasing number of witnesses, Prendergast begins to notice that there is a pattern forming. Eventually taking fellow detective Sandra Torrez along with him, Prendergast sets out to find out what D-FENS' problem is and if there is any way of solving it peacefully.

    Seeing this film for the first time in my mid-teens, I dismissed it as another vigilante film, albeit one based around an awesome performance by Michael Douglas. Seeing it again now as an adult who is starting to feel some of the mileage, the sublime performances both by Douglas and Duvall are much easier to appreciate. Both characters are deliberately designed as having something missing, and the meat of the film lies in the journey they take towards that something. Amateurs simply see it as a harsh indictment of modern, urban society, but they are sorely mistaken. Take it from this little black duck - if you vary sufficiently from the expected norm, life in a "rural" area is every bit as aggravating and frustrating as the journey D-FENS takes in Falling Down, if not a thousand times more.

    You may notice I have not mentioned the director, one Joel Schumacher, as yet. Schumacher has something of a mixed resume, to put it mildly. Watching Falling Down again now for the first time in years, I could not believe that this was the work of the same man whose name is on the worst Batman films that do not star Adam West (and that is saying something). This is by far Schumacher's most intellectually advanced film, not least because it challenges the audience to see how far it can go whilst they remain sympathetic to its anti-hero.

    Falling Down is easily more relevant now than it was when first released, and that is a distinction I confer on very few films. It rewards multiple viewings, and rewards them well. As to whether this is the best presentation of the film you can find, well, read on...

Video

    At times, this is a pretty ordinary transfer. I say this mainly because those times, while few and far between, are worth noting.

    The transfer is presented in the aspect ratio of 2.40:1, which is the same ratio it was presented in theatrically. The IMDB's technical specifications have it that Falling Down was shot anamorphically, so this is the correct way to present it. The transfer is sourced from a 1920 by 1080 progressive telecine, which is sorely appreciated during some of the shots in the more urban locations.

    The transfer is very sharp for the most part. Backgrounds show a minor to moderate tendency to blur, as is characteristic of anamorphically-shot films. Suffice to say that this is the sharpest that Falling Down has ever looked in the home, with some exceptions.

    One such exception exists at 69:50, during the shots of Michael Douglas in his character's conversation over the 'phone with Barbara Hershey's. Douglas is generally out of focus and hazy during this sequence, which would have presented some challenges to the production crew because of the camera's movements and the changes in focus. This shot, and a couple of others I forget the specific timing of, are the exception rather than the rule.

    Shadow detail, on the rare occasion when it is really called for, is good without being exceptional. No low-level noise was evident.

    The colours in the film were quite apparently designed to be as true to life as possible, with none of the manipulations that have become the norm in recent productions present. The transfer accurately reflects this, with no bleeding or misregisration in evidence.

    No compression artefacts were noted. The transfer is presented in the VC-1 codec, with the total bitrate varying all over the place throughout the feature. Peaks of 33 megabits per second are not unusual. Film to video artefacts were not noted in the transfer, either. And as anyone who has been to a city of the size depicted in the film can testify, it is not for lack of opportunity. Film artefacts were mildly evident, with the occasional black or white mark on the picture. These were well within acceptable limits relative to the age of the film.

    Subtitles are offered in English For The Hearing Impaired. These frequently offer evidence for the validity of my favourite saying, that when you read half the sentence you lose all of the meaning. They do acceptably render the general gist of the lines, but they frequently kill important nuances.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The good news: The main soundtrack is lossless.

    The bad news: It is only 2.0 channels.

    Nine soundtracks in total are offered on this disc. The first is the original English dialogue in Dolby Digital 2.0, which I would have skipped except for one thing. The second soundtrack, which is the original English dialogue in Dolby TrueHD 2.0, is flagged as the default. Both have surround encoding that directs a lot of the music to the rears, but this is mainly a stereo affair.

    Dubs are offered in Dolby Digital 2.0 French, French, Italian, and Spanish. For those who are curious about the two French tracks, one is Parisian French, the other dubbed in Quebec (how much of a difference this makes, I will gladly accept comments from French-speakers about). Two dubs, both in Dolby Digital 1.0, are also offered in Spanish and Portuguese. According to the packaging, the Spanish 2.0 track is Castilian and the 1.0 track Latin. All of these dubs are incredibly low-fi, even compared to the English Dolby Digital track.

    The dialogue is clear and easy to understand at all times, even when the Hispanic gangsters are shouting at the top of their lungs. This is an important point, as the dialogue is absolutely key to the film. No problems with audio sync were noted.

    The music consists of a score by James Newton Howard. Although it is not particularly remarkable, it enhances the atmosphere of the onscreen happenings quite nicely.

    The surround channels received some minor redirected signal to support the music and some very occasional environmental sounds. Most of the soundtrack comes out of the front three channels, however.

    The subwoofer mostly had the night off. The occasional gunshot or car crash woke it for a couple of seconds, but it could have been switched off and not missed.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Audio Commentary

Featurette

Theatrical Trailer

    The two versions of the disc appear to be pretty similarly specified, although High-Def Digest is a lot less forgiving of the video transfer they saw. As this is a Warner film, I doubt there will be too significant a difference between the two discs.

    Falling Down is an urban equivalent of Heart Of Darkness, and easily Schumacher's most thought-provoking film even if that is not saying a lot.

    The video transfer is good.

    The audio transfer is good.

    The extras are minimal, but worth a look.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall