Je viens avec la pluie

OK, I've been wanting to watch this for soooo long and finally I made it! First of all forget the adverts, they completely betray the movie. I was expecting a real good HK gangster movie with a western edge but what I got was much slower, more serious and very edgy. Josh Hartnett was great, possibly the best I've ever seen him and to be honest I usually can't stand him. Well, changed my mind! Unfortunately there were parts of the movie where the dialog was difficult to understand, and this was down down to the Asian actors.....BUT.... It wasn't impossible, and overall the acting in the movie was great. The thing that struck me most about the film was the cinematography which had that real Asian edge, think of any modern Korean movie, it:s beautiful! And the speed of the movie which was sloooow but perfect! I loved it, and I think if you have ever been into Asian cinema or any other for that fact you will too. I:m not going to tell you anything about the story, just watch it......

Here's my 2 cents, and I rarely log in to IMDb to actually write anything, I usually just read the threads. I saw this film at the Pusan International Film Festival, and while I feel lucky to have seen it debut there, walked away with mixed feelings. "Rain" is a thoroughly unconventional film, which is fine. Unconventional is not for everyone, so that is not where the film falls short. Where it fails is in the lack of cohesiveness and not feeling like a finished product.

To answer one of the thread questions - yes, Shawn Yue's English is absolutely horrible. He just felt very uncomfortable and awkward. The rest of the cast was not bad, it's clear that English is not their first language, but it's bearable. Lee Byung Hun's is very good actually, and he's able to emote and act very well despite his lack of fluency.

Much of the acting is good - it's not excellent, but it is good. The cinematography is effective, and there's a lot of atmosphere as well as camera work that lends itself to the characters well. The POV is always very interesting and begs something of the viewer, whether it's a desire to see what is just off screen, or how the environment connects with the characters, or even how the lines running on screen draw comparisons to both themes occurring and characters state of mind. Particularly, there is something very interesting the vertical nature of HK, and the way it is captured on camera, and the more natural environment where *beep* is residing in a tent... if you watch carefully there's some visual comparisons drawn that show well thought out cinematography.

As for comparisons, there's also a lot of comparing and contrasting of the films main cast, as they deal with very similar questions of morality but deal with it very differently. This is perhaps the most interesting points of the film.

That much being said, I did not actually enjoy the film. It had its well made aspects, and was very intriguing, but never produces enough substance to turn the intriguing thematic material into anything more solid than mere intrigue. You'll walk out wondering - what the hell was all that about anyway? And you'll have ideas, especially about the messianic and religious symbolism the film draws upon, but there's just not enough substance to call it anything but flimsy at best. It's not even on the level of being ambiguous.

The soundtrack may work for some, and I even enjoy Radiohead, but it was overwhelming for me. Yes, it fits the atmosphere, but it was overused, it felt like the soundtrack equivalent of "Speed Racer's" cartoony VFX. It fit, but was just too much.

Finally, there was perhaps a bit too much unnecessary gruesome imagery that could have been more subtly shown or even implied. I'm not against violence in film, but "rain" took it beyond what was necessary, the audience simply did not need to see everything that was shown. I felt like this was enforced by the maggots in *beep* eye, which was not violent, but simply felt like it was put in for the explicit shock factor. Some may disagree with me on this point, fine, but I felt like it was a bit much.

I really wanted to like this film, and feel it could have been a very good movie. I don't think it could be a masterpiece of cinema, but could have been very solid, but in the end "Rain" felt like a film that had it been a bit more thought out, and about 30% more well executed, could have been a truly solid art house thriller, but ultimately falls short of not what we want, but rather what we need in order to actually comprehend the film as a whole.

I do love IMDb. Look up a movie...any movie...and you'll find at least one moron crying about how it's the worst thing they've ever seen. Fair enough, but if you can point to just one movie and tell me it's the worst thing ever then you obviously have not watched enough crap. Just glancing at the board section below reveals two people who share this sentiment without even going past one page. This movie is strange, a little disjointed, and it certainly has it's flaws...but the worst movie ever? Please.

If I had to sum up Josh Hartnett's career in a word it would be "odd". It's kind of like he went from being fodder for women's fantasies and decided "screw this...let's get weird". That really worked with Lucky Number Slevin, but not so much here. The story follows Hartnett as an investigator hunting down some rich guy's son. That sounds like something you've seen a million times, but that's just the start. It's full of poorly timed flashbacks, mismatched edits, and stuff that just plain doesn't make any sense. I'm probably missing something since I did catch a few religious undertones, but I was too busy trying to piece together what the hell was going on to pay much more attention to it. Other than that the films comes across very well in an almost dark, mildly unsettling way. The story has a lot of substance to it, but maybe a bit too much at times when it seems like too much is going on. All in all though it's really not that bad.

The main reason why I decided to see this is because it has Byung-hun Lee in it although he isn't the main character in this. I wanted to see more movies where he is in mainstream Hollywood movies. Besides him being a top actor in Korea, I enjoyed few of the movies he was in and few dramas as well. And thought the movie was at least going to be interesting because of Lee's charisma and coolness he portrays on screen. He just didn't stand out in this and his character is wasted, plus the direction of it all made it a disaster. This is far from one of the best thrillers I seen, but it's a explicit thriller with violence and nudity. It's basically a thriller with shock value, but it sort of lacks in that department to some degree as well. It isn't really a clever thriller or anything like that although it has symbolism, it just seemed a bit forced at times. It also isn't really all that psychological either, even if it tries to be. While also trying to get the female audiences attention by getting the main actors to take off their shirts constantly, which might have worked. But it takes away from the movie because it just seems like a they are at a photo-shoot or shooting a commercial. After the first hour the movie starts to really drag with nothing much happening and without the plot progressing all that much. I also disliked the girl that played Byung-hun Lee's character's lover in this, I didn't like her presence in this movie and her acting was terrible. It would have been nice if Thea Aquino got a bigger role in this although currently she is a unknown actress, but her presence in this seemed much better and it's not only because she takes her clothes off. I know it's trying to go for the artsy approach but it fails in that level, it just didn't seem all that artistic. The second half of the movie just didn't feel the same as the first half and not in a good way either. When I first saw the trailer to this I thought it was going to be at least a decent movie, but was left disappointed. It just tries too hard to be something it's not. It should have just went with the direction of the first half without the crap that is thrown in for the second half.

3.8/10

Just too contrived. We start in the Philipines with a sort of lost in the jungle story and end up with "over the top" Chinese gangsters deep in recreational ultra violence... unrelated. I must have missed what all these bad guys had to do with anything. Could this have been two different rolls of film joined into one? Acting is wooden, accents are terrible and the poor American pretty boy looks as confused as I feel! There is some side story of a gangster trying to cure his dreadful girlfriend of heroin addiction in a lost cabin. Nothing to do with anything. The bare chested scenes are simply irrelevant and stick out like sweaty soft porn. Avoid.