This song is based on the 1993 Joel Schumacher film Falling Down starring Michael Douglas and Robert Duvall, about an apparently "normal" man a middle-aged white-collar worker who finally snaps under the stress, frustration, and absurdity of big city life. It is another of the few up-tempo songs on the album, and, although the guitar solos are quite short and the song itself is not quite as deep as some of the other material on the album, it's a really good little rocker from a musical point of view.
Away from the jungle of 'Lord Of The Flies' and 'The Edge Of Darkness', we are taken here to the urban jungle of a vast megapole namely Los Angeles, but any other gigantic city in any industrialised country could have been the scene of such action. Like in the aforementioned songs/stories, the main character's sense of self fades away after he's reached his breaking point (in his particular case after losing both his job and family) and he finally loses control "Each step gets closer to losing his head." The song's theme is somehow similar to that of 'Age Of Innocence' and highlights the flaws of an ungrateful modern society that does not look after its citizens (may it be through the lack of care for the unemployed who are made redundant or the lack of proper law enforcement against criminals) "'Cause nothing is fair just you look around."
Even if most of us can relate to his frustrations from over-priced conveniences like a soft drink to being unable to be served what we want in a fast-food restaurant the main protagonist somehow "takes the law into his own hands" and ends up being considered a criminal, following what Nietzsche warned us about:
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
Towards the end, the main character asks in disbelief: "I'm the bad guy? How did that happen?" Indeed, whereas the lack of social structures creates wild predators out of otherwise perfectly decent human beings in 'Lord Of The Flies' and 'The Edge Of Darkness', the unfairness and hypocritical constraints of a "civilised world" can also achieve the same when some individuals are pushed beyond the edge. Let's just hope that this is not "a glimpse of the future."
