Joel Schumacher's Falling Down is usually remembered for Michael
Douglas's volcanic turn as D-Fens; yet the film's moral and emotional centre
lies elsewhere. It belongs to Robert Duvall, whose portrayal of Sergeant
Martin Prendergast gives the film its conscience, its melancholy and,
ultimately, its quiet hope.
Duvall plays Prendergast as a man on the brink of retirement, shuffled off
to desk duty after a traumatic shooting. In lesser hands the character might
have been a stock weary cop counting the days; Duvall instead builds him
from small, almost invisible gestures. His voice is soft, nearly apologetic;
his posture slightly stooped; his gaze observant rather than commanding.
Where D-Fens explodes outward, Prendergast absorbs. The performance is
reactive, patient, almost recessive, and that restraint becomes its power.
From the outset, Prendergast is framed as diminished. At work he is
patronised by colleagues; at home he is dominated by a fragile, manipulative
wife who infantilises him. Duvall resists caricature here. He does not play
Prendergast as weak; he plays him as cautious, a man who has learned that
force has consequences. The backstory of the mistaken shooting hangs over
him like a moral wound. Every decision is filtered through that guilt.
As the narrative intercuts between D-Fens's rampage and Prendergast's
investigation, a subtle inversion takes shape. D-Fens believes he is
reclaiming agency in a world that has wronged him; Prendergast appears to
have relinquished his. Yet scene by scene, Duvall charts a quiet
reclamation. The more clearly Prendergast understands the psychology of the
suspect, the more he begins to trust his own instincts again. The detective
work becomes an existential process.
Duvall excels in moments of understatement: a pause before contradicting a
superior; a slight tightening of the jaw when his wife's anxiety spirals;
the calm insistence with which he pieces together D-Fens's path across Los
Angeles. He never overplays the character's intelligence; it simply
accumulates. By the time Prendergast realises he is the only officer truly
grasping the situation, the audience recognises that authority has shifted
to him almost imperceptibly.
The climax crystallises the arc. Confronting D-Fens, Prendergast does not
meet rage with rage. He meets it with clarity. The famous exchange, in which
D-Fens begins to see himself not as a righteous avenger but as the villain
of the piece, lands because Duvall underplays it. There is no triumphant
flourish, only a steady moral gaze. In that moment, Prendergast completes
his journey from self-doubt to moral certainty.
What makes the arc satisfying is that it is not about heroism in the
conventional sense. Prendergast does not rediscover bravado; he rediscovers
judgement. His retirement becomes less an escape than a choice made on his
own terms. The man who began the film overshadowed by louder personalities
ends it as the figure who restores order, both externally and internally.
In a film often read as a lightning rod for cultural grievance, Duvall
provides ballast. His performance anchors the story in empathy and
responsibility. If Douglas supplies the fire, Duvall supplies the gravity;
and it is gravity, in the end, that gives Falling Down its enduring
weight.
Success Rate: + 1.8
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