BLACK RAIN
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1989 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Engrossing and moody travelogue of the
dark side of Osaka. As an excuse for the atmospheric
photography there is a police chase plot you have seen *many*
times before. The plot is punctuated by a lot of mindless
violence and action, but the atmosphere is really the film's
main virtue. Rating: low +1.
A store near me sells a watch that comes with five watchbands of different colors and five watch faces to match. The ad says it is five different watches in one. The works, of course, remain the same. You just change some superficial outer trappings and the ad would have you believe that you really have a different watch. At times I think that the American film industry thinks that same way.
The story of BLACK RAIN was a good one at one time. A cop is trying to bring a mean and violent criminal to justice. The cop screws up and his prisoner escapes. Now he has got to go out into the hostile environment to bring the creep to justice again. Fortunately, he gets someone to work with him. Unfortunately, he and his new partner can't stand each other. But working together for a common goal, against all odds, they learn to respect each other and finally get the creep. But they have also learned an important lesson in human understanding. Yes, Hollywood has once again remade RED SUN, RED HEAT, 48 HOURS, BEVERLY HILLS COP, and by now probably a dozen other films that have that same plot, give or take a detail. I will give whoever first wrote that plot some credit, it would have been a good plot if it had been used once. Too bad it has become such a popular standard that good filmmakers like Ridley Scott feel they can get away filming it again and calling it a new story.
Now let's get down to a few of the specific details for BLACK RAIL. In this case, the hostile environment is Osaka. The main cop is really two American cops. One is Nick a dishonest but basically good cop sleazily played by Michael Douglas. Nick's close shaves are many but always figurative--he seems to be able to go for what must be an entire week with the same two-day growth of beard. And if the Japanese think Americans are barbarians, Douglas's character more than justifies the viewpoint. The other cop is played much neater by Andy Garcia. They stumble onto a Yakuza execution in New York City and nab a major Japanese hood. However, escorting him to Osaka turns out harder than they expected. So they find themselves in a strange city in which they do not speak the language, escorted by a dour-faced Japanese detective, Masahiro (played in a nicely understated manner by Ken Takakura of THE YAKUZA). The story is really about how Nick and Masahiro learn to respect each other and how with motorcycle chases and gunfights Nick regains his self-respect and becomes honest again.
If such a hackneyed plot is to be turned into a watchable film by anyone, it would probably be a Ridley Scott. Scott has directed some good films, though generally their weakness has been plot problems. His ALIEN is a very good film but almost entirely because of mood and great visuals, not because it has a stellar plot. Similarly, the visual sense of BLADE RUNNER outdistances the plot by miles. Scott's plots are acceptable (usually better than for BLACK RAIN's) but it is the misty atmospheric feel of the film that makes his work worth seeing. Watching a Scott film is the health equivalent of smoking a pack and a half of cigarettes. Virtually every scene seems to have smoke or smog in it somewhere. He has smoggy scenes of New York, smoggy scenes of Osaka, smoky steel refineries, smoky police departments. But even if he is starting to do the smoky bit a little too much he has a fresh eye, particularly for accenting the alien in an alien culture. His Osaka is a Japan we have rarely seen before, from neon buses to smoky (of course) pachinko palaces.
I will give BLACK RAIN a low +1 on the -4 to +4 scale as an atmospheric travelogue. It was worth the $3 I paid just to see a different view of Japan. I figure the plot comes along free, and that was just a bit more than what it is worth.
Mark R. Leeper
att!mtgzx!leeper
leeper@mtgzx.att.com
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews