FILM VIEW; Some Holes Don't Come From Bullets

Michael Douglas's life in "Falling Down" is a critical mass of all-American problems. Divorced, unemployed, caught in traffic on a sweltering morning, he walks away from his car to face gang violence, vagrants begging for money, bad service at a fast-food joint.

These things could happen to any of us. But would any of us respond by: beating a Korean grocer, shooting a Latino street gang, stabbing a neo-Nazi, terrorizing a Whammyburger restaurant and using a rocket launcher to blow up a construction site? Even if we were having a really, really bad day?

There are movies that honestly hit a raw nerve and others that cynically push your buttons, and "Falling Down" is a push-your-buttons film. It may also be the last big Bush-era movie, custom-made for the rabidly conservative Rush Limbaugh crowd that sees social blight as proof that America is lost in a liberal wilderness.

The film catalogues urban disasters and goes out of its way to manufacture "controversy," yet it falls apart on the basic level of common sense. The Douglas character is depicted as both an ordinary Joe and Travis Bickle from "Taxi Driver." That idea is illogical -- you either have it in you to be Travis Bickle or you don't -- but it sells. Hollywood may have voted for Bill Clinton, but "Falling Down" masterfully exploits conservative sentiments.

With his ragged crew cut, short-sleeved white shirt plus pocket protector, and a license plate that reads "D-FENS," Mr. Douglas's character is not part of any cultural elite. The tough-minded performance encourages sympathy yet never asks viewers to like him. Joel Schumacher's vivid direction depicts the harsh reality of urban Los Angeles while letting the film slip into black humor with ease. It's too bad this savvy direction and acting bolster Ebbe Roe Smith's disingenuous script, which evades the fundamental question: Was the main character always crazy, or did society make him snap?

The anonymous D-FENS character starts out as a surrogate for the frustrated working and middle classes. When the Korean grocer mispronounces "five" as "figh," D-FENS shouts, "They don't have v's in China?" He expresses what a segment of the audience might guiltily think but wouldn't dare say. Soon he is threatening the shopkeeper with a baseball bat. The film doesn't ask viewers to condone his behavior, but it assumes they will sympathize with its source.

The character's response to crime and unemployment implies: "Don't blame me. I'm the victim." There is an audience for this opinion, which is the attitude Rush Limbaugh promotes on his radio show and in his best seller, "The Way Things Ought to Be." Just as Mr. Limbaugh's book suggests that the homeless bear some blame for their condition ("I hadn't done anything to cause his homelessness," he complains of a man living in a shelter), so D-FENS rails against a vagrant and snarls at him to get a job.

Like Mr. Limbaugh, the film is smart enough to use satire instead of logic to make political points. A man who asks D-FENS for money says, "I haven't eaten for days," though he happens to be holding a sandwich. When D-FENS shoots up the Whammyburger, he has reason to be annoyed; he wants breakfast and is three minutes too late.

If "Falling Down" were content to be an absurdist black comedy, this sleight-of-mind would make sense. But the film also pretends to be seriously provocative. When a neo-Nazi (played by Frederic Forrest) appears, the story takes a turn that leads to utter nonsense.

The deranged neo-Nazi has an arsenal behind his military-surplus store and sees D-FENS as a kindred spirit. "We are not the same," D-FENS says. "I'm an American. You're a sick . . . " Then he puts on a brown shirt and comes a step closer to becoming the neo-Nazi.

It turns out that D-FENS was probably one sick puppy long before any Whammyburger workers got on his nerves. His ex-wife has been so worried about his violent temper that she has gotten a restraining order against him. Home videos show him bullying his wife and daughter years before the pressures of urban life supposedly made him crack.

Yet the film depicts him as if he were some socially relevant missing link between the audience and the neo-Nazi. This is a master stroke of movie manipulation. Conservative viewers can identify with D-FENS as long as it is cathartic to do so; liberals can debate whether he is the cause or the symptom of social problems; and when he turns into a madman, the entire audience can distance itself. To wonder whether we are like D-Fens is simply to fall for a question as contrived as a high-school debate issue.

The film's duplicity is evident in smaller touches as well. The Douglas character is listed in the credits as "D-FENS." But the police learn his name, Bill Foster, and use it when questioning his mother. She is called Mrs. Foster; the credits coyly list her as "D-FENS's mother."

Even Charles Bronson's exploitative "Death Wish" movies are more honest. That series may be vile in its admiration for the vigilante Mr. Bronson plays, but at least it has the courage of its vileness. "Falling Down" wants its madman to be Everymadman, too. "I'm the bad guy?" he asks at the end, sincerely baffled (though no more than the audience). By then viewers might feel as jerked around by the movie as poor Bill Foster is by urban America.