A Movie Review

By Larry Cohen c 2026

As a rule, I don’t write movie reviews. This is a rule because I don’t know how to review a film the way a real, paid movie critic knows how. I admit I do not.

With that said (or written), I am going to take a stab at a movie that I think about on a daily basis because there are times, too many times, that I think I could have played the part of the main character, the protagonist. In fact, the film that I will speak of, I even could do the dialogue, word-for-word and it would make sense today though the film was made over 30 years ago..

The film is “Falling Down” (1993, color) starring Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall. This film is more than just a better-made “Death of a Salesman”. It’s a real-life drama with a main character who just had enough of everything…his job, his wife, the cost of living, traffic jams, bad fast food…everything. His World is not only falling down but falling apart. He’s a man from a previous era caught up in a World that doesn’t play by the rules, or at least the rules as he knows them to be.

Every scene is carefully crafted but the scene that strikes home with me here in Central New York State is the “What’s wrong with the street?” scene. . Every time I see NYS road workers working on a street or road, I ask myself, “What’s wrong with the street? It was fine yesterday. What’s wrong with the street today?” If one cannot watch the entire movie, the salient clips, especially this one, usually can be found online with little trouble

Then, there is the “Whammy Burger” scene. I myself used to use the Whammy Burger dialogue at a few local fast-food restaurants, if they can even be called restaurants. I really did. However, when I realized that no one was “getting it”, I gave it up. The Whammy Burger scene, in my view, will go down in film history as one of the all-time great scenes of modern film. The director, Joel Schumaker, could not have found more stereotypical characters to play the cashier with her never-ending giggle and the Whammy Burger manager with his gap-toothed patronizing smile. I won’t say more about the scene since it would be a true spoiler.

The film, in my view, is a tragedy, since it depicts the ordinary, everyday man who worked hard, probably was even a veteran, and ends up with the short end of the stick. In this age, in this era, more and more of us are beginning to feel the same way ourselves.