Well, when life sucks, there’s sort of a snowball effect. For Bill Foster, his marriage fell apart. Then he lost his job when he was told he was over-educated and under-qualified for the work he did. Then he couldn’t pay child support, and couldn’t see his daughter. Then his wife got a restraining order against him after she felt threatened by his temper and occasional angry outbursts. But Bill (we’ll call him D-FENS, since that’s his license plate, and for most of the film, his identity) carries on and keeps going. He gets dressed, packs a lunch, and drives, well, somewhere. And he gets stuck in traffic. And the air conditioner breaks down. And the noise and anger around him are just too god damn much. So D-FENS up and walks away, leaving his car (and hopefully, he thinks, his problems) behind. It is, after all, his daughter’s birthday. So why not get her a present and surprise her? That’ll make things better.
But along the way, our man D-FENS encounters opposition. A Korean store-owner overcharges for soda, leaving him without enough change to call his ex-wife. When D-FENS gets upset, the store owner threatens him with a bat. So. D-FENS takes the bat and trashes everything in the store that’s overpriced. Prices are rolled back in favor of the (American) consumer, says Mr. D-FENS, who drops fifty cents on the counter for his coke and goes on his way, having done his good deed.
And the march across L.A. begins.
After his confrontation with the storeowner, D-FENS just wants to enjoy a cold soda and rest for a moment. So he climbs a grassy hill to sit and look out over the city. However, this little spot happens to be in gang territory. When gang members show up and demand his briefcase, he lashes out again, and fights them off with the storeowner’s bat. Before, he was defending himself and what he thought were his rights (in his mind, of course), but he wasn’t the aggressor. Now, he openly mocked the gang (“Maybe if you wrote [the graffiti] in fuckin’ English, I could understand it.”) and challenged them as they escaped (“Clear a path, motherfuckers! I’M GOING HOME!”).
And, of course, in this environment, and this film, violence creates more violence.
So, the gang gangs up (hyuk), and drives around town looking for him. When they find him, they speed by and unload on an entire people-filled city block with a load of automatic weapons. They manage to maim most of the bystanders, but miss D-FENS. While they try to see if they hit him, they hit a car, and wipe out.
A small crowd forms at the corner of the accident, and D-FENS casually strolls up to the scene.
Now, check it that out. It’s not by accident that a certain Mr. Christ appears behind Mr. D-FENS. Coincidence? Or a hint that D-FENS is, in his mind, placing his role in life a little higher?
Just one of the gang members is still alive after the crash, but his out-of-reach uzi is picked up by D-FENS, who fires off a shot, and misses him. (“You missed. … I missed, too.”)
And he aims for the guys who just tried to take him out, but after hearing his screams for mercy, slowly turns his aim, and shoots him in the leg, as if to grant said request. Although, D-FENS gathers up the rest of the gang’s guns in a bag, and walks off, leaving him with a “Take some shooting lessons, asshole.”
And the crowd quickly clears a path. D-FENS is going home.
And that’s where the film turns the corner. Before, you could at least argue D-FENS was a sympathetic character who was somewhat victimized. But, when taking the law into his own hands, and striking back at those he perceives as wrong, D-FENS becomes the bad guy. He’s placed himself as above everything else, and made himself the judge. The film manages to stay the course pretty well, but does get a bit formulaic and rely on Robert Duvall’s unnecessary character development a bit too much. But this scene, where D-FENS becomes a violent vigilante, is a pretty strong indicator of what could’ve been.
“I’m the bad guy? When did that happen?”
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