Black Rain

Nick Conklin (Douglas) and Charlie Vincent (Garcia) are US cops who get involved in a Yakuza killing and capture a dangerous murderer Sato (Yasuka Matsuda). When delivering him to authorities in Japan, Sato escapes and Conklin and Vincent are forced to team up with Masahiro Matsumoto (Ken Takakura) in order to hunt him down. The clash in cultures creates tension as the investigation continues.

On the surface this is a mismatched partner movie that thinks it's more than that because it addresses issues of honour between culture. It is more than a buddy cop movie and manages to be a tense thriller and look at the clash of East & West. I'm not a Douglas fan but he does play the darker characters quite well and is pretty good here. Garcia is good but is really only a plot device when you look at his character. Takakura is strong in his role as the cop trying to hold to the ways of honour of his bosses but torn by the action methods of the West and Douglas. It is him who has to carry much of the moral weight of the film. Matsuda carries off Sato well and makes him more that a gangster character.

The real star of this is Scott's direction. He makes his city-scapes a present day version of Blade Runner - Japan is darkly dangerous and lit in neon. The direction is very stylish but can sometimes take away from the quality of the product and make it seem all style and no substance. Hans Zimmer score is as haunting as ever and fits the mood perfectly.

The story is perhaps a tad hackneyed and is not anything that different. Some of the East/West clash stuff doesn't work but it is still interesting to see the characters change to take elements of the other's cultures. The style and action carries the film well - any insight into culture differences is a nice bonus, overall an unoriginal idea is turned into a good film by good actors and a good director.

Black Rain is directed by Ridley Scott and written by Craig Bolotin and Warren Lewis. It stars Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia, Ken Takakura, Kate Capshaw, Yusaku Matsuda and Tomisaburo Wakayama. Music is by Hans Zimmer and cinematography by Jan de Bont.

After New York cops Nick Conklin (Douglas) and Charlie Vincent (Garcia) arrest a sword wielding psychopath named Sato Koji (Matsuda), they are tasked with escorting him back to Osaka in Japan. From here they are plunged into a war that is brewing in the Japanese underworld.

You see there's a war going on here and they don't take no prisoners.

Welcome to Blade Runner's younger brother, Black Rain, a Ridley Scott film I feel has never received the credit it deserves. Viewing from the outside it looked like one of those 1980s cop movies, one where the main cop is washed up and perched on the edge of oblivion, his partner his sanity and voice of reason. However, Scott (brought in late to direct when Paul Verhoeven bailed) wasn't interested in the normalities of the cop drama, he saw the potential for cross continent culture clash and the chance to bring his visual skills to the fore.

Yep, it's the big neon glitter of Osaka and the grime and dime of New York that is the big draw here, but characterisations are still rich for the drama, with Scott taking plenty of time to set up the lead protagonist. We know Conklin's troubles, we know how tight his friendship is with Charlie, and by the time things go grim and dour in Osaka we understand just why Conklin plunges head first into a do or die situation.

Visually Scott infuses the picture with cramped locales, steamy streets, industrial wastelands and blood red suns, while his lead character is an unshaven trench coat wearer who still manages to look devilishly cool. It's perhaps the drawing of Osaka that is the most impressive, for it's an alien creation to us as much as it obviously is to Conklin, the ignorance gap between America and Japan still wide apart in 1989.

Complaints? At just over two hours in running time the film does have periods of flatness, where some better editing wouldn't have gone amiss; though Scott's original cut was considerably longer, begging the question on if more could have been done to enhance the seething culture clash between cops Conklin and Matsumoto (Takakura)?

Another problem is that Capshaw's character is under written, a crime when it's the sole female part of note in a two hour movie. Did more of the character hit the cutting room floor? Likely, because now it's a token eye candy offering, which is a shame since what little we do get hints at a savvy performance from Capshaw.

Ridley Scott lifts Black Rain from merely being a fish out of water thriller to something more layered. True to say there is more style than substance (what style though), but there is still very much interesting juxtapositioning of countries and human interactions of credible worth as well. 8/10

Black Rain is an absolutely gorgeous movie to look at. And for the most part it's highly entertaining and well acted - the guy playing Sato is brilliantly menacing. But occasionally, very occasionally, it descends into either complete predictability or downright cheesiness. A motorbike chase, well, that's a surprise! And that award ceremony right near the end - why? It's totally irrelevant, feel good factor nonsense - the sort of stuff you get with bog standard action movies. And this is not bog standard, and not really an action movie. Certainly underrated and deserving of a better audience than it has received, but ultimately let down by a few lapses in quality.

Douglas, as a tough american detective and his partner played superbly by Andy Garcia chase down a murder suspect on his home turf- Tokyo An excellent movie that explores the culture shock felt by Douglas on his chase and the bureaucracy that tries to stop him..this violent tension filled film is not for the young ones but provides loads of action from the director of Blade Runner.. on a scale of one to ten... a 7

I was searching a review from a Japanese reviewer and found one, very tough with the film. It made me react here.

First, I consider myself as neutral as nor American nor Japanese even if I know those two fascinating countries inhabitants a little. And I did not feel the same the Japanese reviewer did. In my sense the film does not mock Japan. It does not show Japan as 'inferior' but as different. And this is all the interest of this film whose purpose in my opinion is to show the opposite mentalities and culture. Both sides are presented. The bad and the good ones.

The Bad : Japoneses are showed as ridiculous with red tape and bureaucracy matters, with shy behaviors, weird violence (for occidental people). But Americans too. Those are presented as brutal stupid beasts, for example when Charlie Vincent run after a motorbike without understanding the trap is going into or when Nick Conklin does not manage to restrain himself from knocking everywhere. Or when Nick signs a stupid sheet of paper without distrust. The two Americans are also presented as arrogant as they don't even think that foreigners could speak English .. because they don't imagine it is even possible. Even the American/Japanese prostitute rejects their arrogance. Also American police is presented as corrupted and messy ... So no one wins here I guess.

The good : Japaneses are also presented as good. Cops are straight but cooperative and honor respectful, mainly instructed, efficient. Even if they lack of adaptiveness and are bad inspired to reject the American cops help. The mafia is well presented too. Franckly, they really are scary guys but gain respect with their honor code. Sato is impressive.

Here I agree with the Japanese reviewer : The Americans are glorified (music helps :). Nick manages on his own (yet with the help of Mas) to solve a difficult case in a country he obviously even doesn't know. This is clearly the weakness of the film.

Yet what I really appreciated was the oppositions between Mas and Nick. Wiseness and honor of Mas, for example when he feels insulted by Nicks thief behavior or when he learns from Nick. Humanity and pugnacity of Nick.

I also liked mafia's leader speech with Nick. Here we definitively can't say the film only runs for America, obviously.

One regret. We definitively see too little of Japan. Even if the film does much in presenting a country that we mainly bad know in occident, it could have done more. That said, I think this was not the purpose of the director who just wanted to focus on mindsets.

Another regret : the ridiculous sounds of the motorbikes especially in the beginning of the film and in the last scene.

The actors are all perfect. The soundtrack is really cool. Contrarily to the Japanese reviewer, I appreciated the way the director represents Japan, with subtlety, as Japan is all about. And USA with strength, as USA are all about too, sometimes too much :). If the oppositions between the two countries are exaggerated, it is in the purpose of showing them better and make understand, I guess. This is a 'must-be-watched' film for me. One of the best of Ridley Scott.