Originally shot in 1996 and scheduled for release last May, ``Hard Rain'' is a costly embarassment Paramount is trying to sweep under the carpet as quickly and quietly as possible. Of course, the recent publicity about star Christian Slater's new role as a celebrity jailbird won't help matters in that area, and although the title was changed from ``The Flood'' to ``Hard Rain'' - supposedly to more accurately reflect the film's content, if you can believe that - a better choice might have been ``Total Washout.''
All the earmarks of a troubled production are here: slapdash visual effects, choppy continuity, a plot that never quite seems to get going. The direction by former cinematographer Mikael Salomon dutifully follows the credo of ``when in doubt, shoot it in slow motion and hope it looks good.'' Unfortunately, one body slogging around in the water at night tends to look very much like another, and often in ``Hard Rain'' it's a challenge to tell who's doing what.
Nor are most viewers likely to care. After a passable first reel in which armored car drivers Tom (Slater) and Charlie (Ed Asner) run afoul of hijacker Jim (Morgan Freeman) and his crew, Graham Yost's screenplay quickly degenerates into water-logged chaos as the few folks left in the submerged town of Huntingsburg, Ind., spend the night chasing and shooting at each other, all for the love of money, in this case some bags containing $3 million that Tom salvaged from the car. Somehow everyone in town has managed to get ahold of a boat or a jet-ski, so each cast member gets an opportunity to be thrown out of his or her watercraft into the dirty canals of this Midwestern Venice.
Also lurking around is a derelict former sheriff (Randy Quaid) and, in one of the film's typically absurd twists, an art-lover named Karen (Minnie Driver) who has made it her mission to save the windows of the local church, come hell or, in this case, high water. As ``Hard Rain'' doggie paddles into its final stretch it becomes obvious that the real reason Karen is around is to give Salomon a chance to photograph Driver and Slater in matching clingy wet T-shirts.
Although a couple of bickering senior citizens (Betty White and Richard Dysart) surface occasionally to contribute some put-downs and profanity, the only real laughs come from the character who miraculously comes back from the dead just long enough to murmur crucial pieces of information, and the only words in the script that seem to ring true are Freeman's frequent declarations that ``I'm only here for the money,'' an attitude that carries over to his lifeless performance.
Technically, the film is sometimes impressive, with a few OK stunts and one solid sequence detailing Tom's escape from a flooding jail cell. But when it resorts to throwing in a near-rape scene for cheap thrills and throws logic out the window by having almost everyone involved completely change their personalities in the last reel, it's obvious this mess was created by people who probably don't have the sense to come in out of the ``Rain.''
James Sanford
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