Above-average tale of a defense plant engineer (Michael Douglas) who loses everything -- his job, his car, his dignity, his temper, his wife, his daughter, his life. We first see him stuck in a Los Angeles traffic jam, bumper to bumper, sweating and fretting, until he walks away from his stalled car and begins to walk "home" -- that is, where his divorced wife (Barbara Hershey) and his young daughter live.
Some home. (Like that in the John Cheever short story, "The Swimmer," it's a fantasy.) As he trudges along in his white shirt, tie, and unhip eyeglasses, he pauses from time to time to phone his wife and tell her he's on his way, because it's his daughter's birthday.
"I know it's Adel's birthday -- what do you want?", she tells him, adding, "I'll call the police if I have to."
Meanwhile, Douglas runs into all kinds of obstacles. A street-wise Korean shopkeeper wants to charge him eighty-five cents for a can of Coke (a big laugh, as of this date) and Douglas blows his cork, smashing some merchandise and walking off with the owner's sawed-off baseball bat.
Things get worse. He crosses paths with some cholos who demand his money and produce a weapon that, when I was a teenager, was widely known as a "Portugese" knife. But he clobbers them with his bat and, later, winds up with a gym bag full of their pistols and automatic weapons. Douglas may be a fruitcake but everyone else is mean too. The confrontations continue and the police, represented by Robert Duvall and Rachel Ticotin, finally get wise to him and track him to the Santa Monica pier where he is more or less holding his wife and child hostage. When Duvall tries to place him under arrest, Douglas asks wonderingly, "I'm the bad guy?" Whatever other things he's lost, self-justification isn't one of them.
From what I'd heard, I hadn't expected much of this film -- another revenge story, along the lines of "Death Wish". But it's actually fairly complex, despite some clumsy moment and many implausibilities. The film's chief weakness is that, though Douglas is clearly around the bend, everybody who gets a taste of his anger somehow has asked for it. The offense can be major -- trying to gun him down on the street -- or minor -- refusing to serve him from the breakfast menu at a burger joint after eleven thirty.
And I don't know if the writer, Ebbe Rowe Smith, intended it this way but both Douglas's ex-wife and Duvall's current wife, played by Tuesday Weld, are both bitches in their different ways. When Douglas has called to say he's on his way home, despite the restraining order, Hershey calls the police and informs them that he has "a tendency towards violence." (He pounded on the door after midnight.) The police ask her if he struck his daughter. No. "Did he -- strike you?" "Not exactly. I didn't want to wait until he got around to it. He COULD -- I think." The cop nods knowingly and makes a note. Abusive husband. That's a cheap, stereotypical shot. Douglas has a restraining order against him because he's suspected of perhaps some day possibly committing a violent act within his family. Kind of a unilateral preemptive move on Hershey's part.
Duvall's wife, Tuesday Weld, is also a thoroughly formulaic figure -- whining, narcissistic, demanding, hypochondriacal, the clear wearer of the pants in the family. Wardrobe and make up have turned her into an ill-groomed slob, but it would have been truer to the character (Duvall: "She lost her beauty.") if she had done her desperate best to look good.
The two wives may be manipulative but Duvall's partner, Rachel Ticotin, comes off as an admirable figure. Not dazzlingly gorgeous, she nevertheless has good, strong features arranged in an uncontrived manner. And she gives a good performance. So does Lois Smith in the small part of Douglas' uncomprehending mother. Some of the bit parts are so poorly done, they're an embarrassment to watch. Douglas himself can't be considered a wildly expressive performer but he successfully suggests the kind of pressure one might find behind a zit that's about to pop. Robert Duvall has given some magisterial performances early in his career -- M*A*S*H and The Godfather among them -- but here rather walks through the part with a lot of pointless or possibly ironic chuckles.
Weaknesses aside, Douglas's character is complicated enough to grip us and the milieu of Los Angeles is captured in all its local color, which varies from indifference to outrage.
Some home. (Like that in the John Cheever short story, "The Swimmer," it's a fantasy.) As he trudges along in his white shirt, tie, and unhip eyeglasses, he pauses from time to time to phone his wife and tell her he's on his way, because it's his daughter's birthday.
"I know it's Adel's birthday -- what do you want?", she tells him, adding, "I'll call the police if I have to."
Meanwhile, Douglas runs into all kinds of obstacles. A street-wise Korean shopkeeper wants to charge him eighty-five cents for a can of Coke (a big laugh, as of this date) and Douglas blows his cork, smashing some merchandise and walking off with the owner's sawed-off baseball bat.
Things get worse. He crosses paths with some cholos who demand his money and produce a weapon that, when I was a teenager, was widely known as a "Portugese" knife. But he clobbers them with his bat and, later, winds up with a gym bag full of their pistols and automatic weapons. Douglas may be a fruitcake but everyone else is mean too. The confrontations continue and the police, represented by Robert Duvall and Rachel Ticotin, finally get wise to him and track him to the Santa Monica pier where he is more or less holding his wife and child hostage. When Duvall tries to place him under arrest, Douglas asks wonderingly, "I'm the bad guy?" Whatever other things he's lost, self-justification isn't one of them.
From what I'd heard, I hadn't expected much of this film -- another revenge story, along the lines of "Death Wish". But it's actually fairly complex, despite some clumsy moment and many implausibilities. The film's chief weakness is that, though Douglas is clearly around the bend, everybody who gets a taste of his anger somehow has asked for it. The offense can be major -- trying to gun him down on the street -- or minor -- refusing to serve him from the breakfast menu at a burger joint after eleven thirty.
And I don't know if the writer, Ebbe Rowe Smith, intended it this way but both Douglas's ex-wife and Duvall's current wife, played by Tuesday Weld, are both bitches in their different ways. When Douglas has called to say he's on his way home, despite the restraining order, Hershey calls the police and informs them that he has "a tendency towards violence." (He pounded on the door after midnight.) The police ask her if he struck his daughter. No. "Did he -- strike you?" "Not exactly. I didn't want to wait until he got around to it. He COULD -- I think." The cop nods knowingly and makes a note. Abusive husband. That's a cheap, stereotypical shot. Douglas has a restraining order against him because he's suspected of perhaps some day possibly committing a violent act within his family. Kind of a unilateral preemptive move on Hershey's part.
Duvall's wife, Tuesday Weld, is also a thoroughly formulaic figure -- whining, narcissistic, demanding, hypochondriacal, the clear wearer of the pants in the family. Wardrobe and make up have turned her into an ill-groomed slob, but it would have been truer to the character (Duvall: "She lost her beauty.") if she had done her desperate best to look good.
The two wives may be manipulative but Duvall's partner, Rachel Ticotin, comes off as an admirable figure. Not dazzlingly gorgeous, she nevertheless has good, strong features arranged in an uncontrived manner. And she gives a good performance. So does Lois Smith in the small part of Douglas' uncomprehending mother. Some of the bit parts are so poorly done, they're an embarrassment to watch. Douglas himself can't be considered a wildly expressive performer but he successfully suggests the kind of pressure one might find behind a zit that's about to pop. Robert Duvall has given some magisterial performances early in his career -- M*A*S*H and The Godfather among them -- but here rather walks through the part with a lot of pointless or possibly ironic chuckles.
Weaknesses aside, Douglas's character is complicated enough to grip us and the milieu of Los Angeles is captured in all its local color, which varies from indifference to outrage.