Down Below

 


 

"Who, me?"

Michael Douglas is "D-Fence", a divorced yuppie and the father of a lovely daughter, when one day his car gets stuck in traffic with a broken air conditioner, he abandons it and embarks on a destruction and violence spree beginning with a baseball bat, continuing with a switchblade knife and ending with a variety of different tools of destruction. Robert Duvall is the police officer in charge of arresting him, on the last day before his retirement. He has a nagging wife, and he carries the trauma his daughter's death, and for years he's been sitting in the office instead of chasing out criminals in the streets, and no one takes him seriously except for his younger female partner.

The Movie is very violent, but the violence is secondary compared to the role of the psychological processes that the two characters undergo (as opposed to the role of sex in Basic Instinct) Douglas sobers up and does only sane thing a person in his position can do. Duval, whom no one has ever heard using foul language, raises his fist and punches a colleague for making an insulting comment, and puts his nagging wife in her rightful place. Is it possible that the difference between the two was much smaller than meets the eye to begin with? Or are they basically two sides of the same coin?