Box office The film grossed $96 million against a $25 million budget. It took the top spot at the United States box office in its first two weeks of release (February 26–28 and March 5–7, 1993).
Falling Down pushed the previous top movie,
Groundhog Day, into the second place box-office spot for both those weeks. It grossed $40.9 million in the United States and Canada and $55.1 million internationally. The film has a
weighted average score of 56 out of 100 on
Metacritic based on 21 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences surveyed by
CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.
Contemporary Contemporary reviews of
Falling Down were generally mixed to positive.
Vincent Canby of
The New York Times called it "the most interesting, all-out commercial American film of the year to date, and one that will function much like a
Rorschach test to expose the secrets of those who watch it." Philip Thomas of
Empire wrote in his review of the film: "While the morality of D-Fens's methods are questionable, there's a resonance about his reaction to everyday annoyances, and Michael Douglas' hypnotic performance makes it memorable."
James Berardinelli wrote: "
Falling Down is replete with gallows humor, almost to the point where it could be classified as a '
black comedy'."
John Truby calls the film "an anti-
Odyssey story" about "the lie of the
American Dream". He adds: "I can't remember laughing so hard in a movie."
Roger Ebert, who gave the film a positive review at the time of its release, wrote: Some will even find it racist because the targets of the film's hero are African American, Latino, and Korean—with a few whites thrown in for balance. Both of these approaches represent a facile reading of the film, which is actually about a great sadness, which turns into madness, and which can afflict anyone who is told, after many years of hard work, that he is unnecessary and irrelevant... What is fascinating about the Douglas character, as written and played, is the core of sadness in his soul. Yes, by the time we meet him, he has gone over the edge. But there is no exhilaration in his rampage, no release. He seems weary and confused, and in his actions he unconsciously follows scripts that he may have learned from the movies, or on the news, where other frustrated misfits vent their rage on innocent bystanders.
The Washington Post writer
Hal Hinson observed: This guy is you, the movie suggests, and if not you exactly, then maybe the guy you're one or two bad breaks from becoming. At one time or another, we've all thought these thoughts, and so when this downtrodden, laid-off, teed-off L.A. defense worker gets out of his car on a sweltering day in the middle of rush hour and decides he's not going to take any more, it comes as no surprise", adding "as he did in
Fatal Attraction and
Wall Street, Douglas again takes on the symbolic mantle of the
Zeitgeist. But in
Falling Down, he and Schumacher want to have their cake and eat it too; they want him to be a hero and a villain, and it just won't work.
Peter Travers of
Rolling Stone gave the film four stars out of five, writing: There's no denying the power of the tale or of Douglas's riveting performance—his best and riskiest since
Wall Street. Douglas neither demonizes nor canonizes this flawed character. Marching across a violent urban landscape toward an illusory home, this shattered Everyman is never less than real ... ''"I'm the bad guy?"
he asks in disbelief. Douglas speaks the line with a searing poignancy that illuminates uncomfortable truths without excusing the character. Schumacher could have exploited those tabloid headlines about solid citizens going berserk. Instead, the timely, gripping Falling Down'' puts a human face on a cold statistic and then dares us to look away.
Mick LaSalle said of the film in the
San Francisco Chronicle: A few times every year, Hollywood makes a mistake, violates formula, and actually makes a great picture.
Falling Down is one of the great mistakes of 1993, a film too good and too original to win any Oscars, but one bound to be remembered in years to come as a true and ironic statement about life in our time. At the time of its release, Douglas's father, actor
Kirk Douglas, declared: "He played it brilliantly. I think it is his best piece of work to date." He also defended the film against critics who claimed that it glorifies lawbreaking: "Michael's character is not the 'hero' or 'newest urban icon'. He is the villain and the victim. Of course, we see many elements of our society that contributed to his madness. We even pity him. But the movie never condones his actions." and Korean Grocers Association protested the film for its treatment of minorities, especially the
Korean grocer. Warner Bros. Korea cancelled the release of
Falling Down in
South Korea following boycott threats. The outcry by the Grocers Association led to Michael Douglas meeting with the organization's members at the Warner Bros. Studio because they "were there and they were pissed. So we had a conversation and I told them, 'Look, I'm very sorry, but there's a reason the screenwriter picked certain things to put in the film.'" Unemployed defense workers were also angered at their portrayal in the film. of
Newsweek, and reported upon as an embodiment of the "
angry white man" stereotype. In 2014,
WhatCulture included Michael Douglas' role in top "10 Most Convincing Movie
Psychopath Performances".
Retrospective On the 24th anniversary of the film's release in 2017, film critic April Wolfe of
LA Weekly wrote in the article entitled "Hey White People..." that it "remains one of Hollywood's most overt yet morally complex depictions of the modern white-victimization narrative, one both adored and reviled by the extreme right". Wolfe said: "Today, we might see D-Fens and the
white supremacist as the infighting sides of the far right — one couches racism in coded words like "thug," while the other wants an outright ethnic cleanse. Ultimately, what both want is to return to their idea of a purer America, unburdened by the concerns of minorities and women". Wolfe suggested that
Rupert Murdoch would "go on to bottle that fury and package it as patriotism" in creating
Fox News. In 2012, Tasha Robinson of
The A.V. Club was critical of the film, describing it as a "profoundly hateful film disguised alternately (and erratically) as either tragedy or humor." An earlier 2008 review on the site was positive, saying, "Heat used as a metaphor for simmering rage is nothing new, but few films execute sweaty psychosis as well."
Accolades •
1993 Cannes Film Festival, Nominated for the (Joel Schumacher) • 1994
Edgar Award, Won for Best Motion Picture Screenplay (Ebbe Roe Smith) ==In other media ==