Cult film with one of the funniest scenes of all time

There’s one thing that hasn’t changed in 30 years: Fast food chains like McDonalds only serve breakfast until a very specific time. What happens afterwards with the food that is already prepared and waiting to be ordered? No idea. In any case, it will no longer be sold.

This can lead to frustration. Especially when you really only enter the restaurant minutes after the end of breakfast time and the customer gets breakfast before you. And no film takes that frustration to the extreme better than director Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down. The perfect titles for the evening after a hard (working) day. And best of all, you can currently stream it on Amazon Prime Video with a subscription.

Falling Down chases Michael Douglas through a nearly two-hour, increasingly absurd tantrum

William Foster (Michael Douglas) is an asshole. Not only does his ex-wife Elizabeth (Barbara Hershey), who has obtained a contact ban for fear of the unpredictable father of her child, think so. So must every single person who crosses paths with Foster on a fateful and damn hot day in LA. Actually, he wants unemployed engineer just bring his daughter a birthday present. From a traffic jam to a lack of change to stress with a gang and a confrontation with a neo-Nazi, Foster’s day becomes bloodier and bloodier. Also because the choleric eventually comes into possession of several firearms.

Martin Prendergast (Robert Duvall) is also having a particularly bad day. The police officer wants to celebrate his retirement and spend one last time with his colleagues. Instead, he is drawn into an unusual case: A psychopath with a briefcase scolds and murders his way through LA, and seems to be getting more dangerous by the minute. But no one takes the police officer seriously.

The breakfast scene is still hilarious 30 years later – and now it’s on Amazon

The premise of the film sounds insanely somber. Falling Down does not skimp on violence and deliberately shows Everyday racism, poverty, systemic inequality and other socio-political issues, which are not only relevant in the US in the 1990s, but are still relevant today. At the same time, the frustrated, irascible William Foster gets to the heart of the small moments of frustration in everyday life in his incendiary speeches. While we grudgingly accept that groceries are getting more and more expensive, Foster demands fair prices with a baseball bat.

Falling Down consists of nothing but small, ever-escalating scenes, which seem more like self-contained skits in their witty dialogues and their absurdity. The heart of the film is the already mentioned burger shop scene. Foster, euphoric from his spontaneous Revenge campaign against everything that has been bugging him for a long time, gets hungry. He walks into a fast food restaurant and orders from the breakfast menu. But breakfast is only until 11:30 a.m. and in the scene it is 11:33 a.m.

This is it, the legendary burger scene that spoke from the heart of millions:

The situation becomes more and more tense, friendly smiling faces turn into grimaces and finally Foster gets his breakfast after all – which has been prepared and packed in the background all the time, waiting to be thrown away.

Michael Douglas’ character isn’t a hero, he’s a villain, a killer, a family man whose ex-wife is afraid of him. But he is too a human tantrum – and who can’t identify with it after hours of traffic jams, absurd price increases in the supermarket or face to face with a Hitler fan?

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