Rain Fall

This isn't a tragic love story or a bloody kill-fest inside a strip club (or a Bourne rip-off) but it's still decidedly oriental in its flavor and content.

CIA office in Japan headed up by Gary Oldman's character decides to outdo the Yakuza by controlling the country rather than just the police force and a few politicians--they could blackmail and extort high government officials, running Japan from behind the scenes and skimmimg rich profits.

Another character in the office of the CIA decides to reveal the blackmail scheme or contents to a reporter and creates a flash drive for that purpose but gets intercepted before the transfer. That's the McGuffin and the premise for the rest of the movie--nothing at all like Bourne, though the music has a quiet Bourne-like track in a couple places.

Rated this 7 stars to get the average higher than the 4.6 because it isn't that bad--my rating would be 5.5. It's mostly dialogue, you have to follow along...some of it is ruined by how unlikely it is to have occurred that way in real life, but overall, except for a brief hanging scene, you could almost watch it with kids in the room.

Rain Fall is a regular movie, a tame one as most of these types go, and not deserving of so many negative reviews though it's not a blockbuster either.

If you're a fan of the Barry Eisler Rain novels, do yourself a favor and don't watch this. This movie is everything the novels are not: boring, full of plot holes, seriously lame fight scenes and a story line that makes little or no sense.

The movie feels patched together, like the director filmed a bunch of scenes and then tried to make them fit. They don't. The acting is fine, all of the cast give their best, but there just isn't much to work with.

The fight scenes are all super-quick-cut editing stuff, so you can't see what is actually going on. That is probably because our martial artist protagonist isn't a martial artist. I've seen better fights on the elementary school playground.

The plot is full of holes; not just little holes, but big, gaping holes that require you to do more than just suspend your disbelief. You would have to get a quick lobotomy before watching this if you don't want to be constantly aggravated by the plot holes. Characters will say something in one scene and then say the opposite in the next scene.

The editing seems to have been done by a spastic drug addict with ADHD: the cuts between scenes are missing any semblance of art or craft. There are a few times where the director blurs part of the picture or tries some other type of artistic effect that just doesn't work. In short, the direction and editing are just plain awful.

By the time you get to the cliché ending you will be bored and thinking about maybe clipping your toenails or something equally exciting. They managed to take an exciting novel about a hit man with issues and turn it into a boring movie. Buy one of the books instead of watching this.

Watched this online last night…...relative to much of what I have watched online with Netflix, this was a pretty good movie, all in all. The plot was fairly predictable, almost formulaic. The producers made the right call in casting; Oldman's role is what convinced me to try it......

The dialogue is mostly in Japanese and a good 90% of the film is set in Japan. This means to be prepared for lots of subtitles. I usually do not mind and a fair percentage of my "all-time, top 20 favourites" are foreign. Just that night, I was hoping for a break from reading and as I mentioned earlier, this plot would not have required my undivided attention on the screen.

Cast: -Kippei Shiina,: does a nice job. Felt a bit like this was supposed to be something of a "vehicle" film for him. He did not become one of my new "must watch" actors but I would be interested in seeing more of his work sometime. He played the role of a reluctant "unbeatable action hero". Got the impression that he is capable of more...... -Oldman was not really at his true best, at times it almost felt like an "impression of how Gary Oldman may act"; Pacino does that sometimes in his less stellar performances. Little, oddly timed, fits of mania, the way he conveys the big "master plan" towards the end....... At times it just felt like a caricature of Oldman's best roles. -Kyoko Hasegawa.: Not one who watches many Japanese films, she was a nice surprise! I felt she was the actress who really "made the show". Does a very nice job of playing "the beautiful woman who was in danger"/ "love interest". Not too much screaming, not too much whining, and she did not try to "Rambo" up either. She was interesting, smart, understated, emotionally strong, very beautiful, and showed some real acting talent. She was far more than just a pretty face; I would be interested in seeing her work again. -Akira Emoto: did a very nice job but the role was sure not one to stretch his acting skills. A minor part, but he usually tends to stand out due to his talent and skill.

So, in summary, if you are looking for an action movie on Netflix (or a rental, do not mind subtitles, like Japanese movies (with some Western influence), and one that has a reasonably happy ending with good casting...... go for it. You could certainly do much worse than "Rain Fall".

This movie is a lesson on how to not make a movie. I had to give up 35 min into the movie because the camera-work was so bad I couldn't stand it anymore. It wasn't hand-held camera bad, it was worse. At least with the shaky hand-held camera you know why the screen keeps moving. In this film the camera seems to have ADD in a bad way, every second or two there is a cut, sometimes to another character, sometimes to an object being handles, sometimes to completely random points in the room. It's a visual frenzy that is very jarring to watch. Additionally every actor in not fully in frame, from mid-forehead up is completely cut off in virtually every shot, and I can't explain why and it's really annoying. The camera also tends to drift a great deal, as if someone left the cart in neutral and it started rolling away but they kept on filming anyway. The plot isn't quite as bad but the story is so hard to follow because of the shoddy camera-work that it might as well be. This movie is dreadful, avoid it unless you are interested in seeing a train wreck on screen.

I'm writing after watching the movie and reading the previous reviews. Watching the film I couldn't help seeing nearly every segment as yet another sad attempt at recapturing the thrills, twists, relationships, etc. carried out so wonderfully in "The Bourne Identity". I felt embarrassed for Gary Oldman playing this cardboard cut-out of the Chris Cooper's 'Conklin' character. I won't bother listing the plagiarized elements- they are too numerous, too obvious, and would take more time than this sad film deserves. I'll take a tip from you earlier reviewers and sample a Barry Eisler novel. I'm so deeply into Martin Cruz Smith's 'Arkady Renko' novels (again!) that I'm liable to be disappointed. I'll need a trip to the Gulag to get my hunger back.