Falling Down is severely unhealthy and macabre in a fizzy, plangent, vaporous way, but neither prissy nor linear, showing just how far the average job has managed to scry. Michael Douglas may as well have spent two hours visiting the barber and the costume cutter and party outfitters next door, the way his impassive time hugged the exit like mouldering curbside walnut. It is torqued, hypertonal, distempered, downright mystical, deteriorative and intrusive, like a divorce during a vacation. It is full of bad hocks and riddled psychosocial offshoots. It left me feeling like my very means were irate—like I had unknotted laces.