Falling Down is a film about a man who we know very little about (at the start) apparently trying to get home to see his family, it is his little girls birthday

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Falling Down

Falling Down is a film about a man who we know very little about  (at the start) apparently trying to get home to see his family, it is his little girls birthday.

The film opens with the camera coming out of his mouth and showing his face then the rest of his body, you notice that he is wearing a white shirt and tie. It then moves around the scene showing you that he is very hot and stuck in a traffic jam, it shows the people in the cars around him, and his reactions to these people. One of the more striking reactions is to a group of black kids in a bus with an American flag on the side. The camera moves around the scene more and comes to show you that the number plate of his car is D-FENS, this tell you a lot about the character, that he probably works for the defence industry, he is a military man, patriotic and well disciplined. As the music in the background gets more intense you can see the anxiety and the feeling of being trapped growing on his face, this, and the music is suddenly relived when he jumps out of his car and walks away from the traffic jam with nothing but his briefcase.

It is at this point that the other main character is introduced, an old stereotypical good cop called Vandergas, the good guy. This is all part of the Propp theory of media, but not as conventional as they are meant to be. You find out it is his last day (also stereotypical for the good guy cop in films)

After getting out of his car he walks through to phone his wife form a phone box. At this point one of the main enigma codes of the story sets in when he is on the phone to his wife he doesn’t say anything, and she just says “is it you?” then his change runs out and the call ends.

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He goes into a local continence store to break a dollar so he can call back, the shop keeper is Korean and will not change the money unless he buys something, agitated but still cool he decides to buy a coke, but completely looses his cool when he gets charged 85¢ for the drink. As he get madder he starts to shout at the shopkeeper and very clearly says “Do you know what I would of paid for this back in 1965? 50¢!!”

The shopkeeper then mumbles something but “D-fens” can’t understand so he asks him to speak in ...

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