Hard Rain

If you are looking for a movie that has some action and is moderately entertaining without requiring much cerebral activity, this is right up your street. It suited my purposes at the time I rented it so I quite enjoyed it. I had heard nothing about it except for the preview I'd seen. Yes, it's no brilliant piece of movie-making, and no it won't change your life. But it is fun and entertaining and doesn't claim to be anything else. (I was pleasantly surprised with Betty White's performance, a long way from 'Golden Girls')

Hard Rain is a nifty action thriller, set during the middle of a titanic flood in a small town in Indiana. Christian Slater plays a local security guard, attempting to transport the loot out of town with his partner, but as always, it all goes terribly wrong. On the run, from a band of determined thieves, led by Morgan Freeman Slater hides the money and takes refuge with the town sheriff and his band of officers. Only they're seeing green too and Slater is on his own.

The sodden atmosphere of this film is unique and impressive, as is the set design. The film is technically very cool, clever too and working with so much water must've been hell for the crew. The performances are all well rounded enough in Hard Rain but the script lacks the spark to truly make this great or memorable. Sure there are some exciting moments, but what action film doesn't have some excitement? With such a unique setting, I'm surprised that there just wasn't more of a good thing. Overall, I enjoyed it. This film is good action flick. Nothing more, nothing less.

You could compare it with Rob Cohen's HURRICANE HEIST, not the story itself but the overall scheme and atmosphere. Heist disaster films are not so common after all. This one, despite being predictable, remains interesting, because you have several levels of characters armored truck drivers, hoodlums and rogue sheriff deputies. Morg Freeman is unusual in a gangster role, though not a brutal criminal either, rather sympathetic compared to the sheriff. Good photography and overall directing, good scenes, it's a shame that Mikael Solomon did not continue in the big screen movies business but instead TV series one.

Huntingburg, Indiana faces flooding as the dam is forced to open the gates. Sheriff Mike Collins (Randy Quaid) is directing the evacuation even though he lost the election. Tom (Christian Slater) and his uncle Charlie (Edward Asner) are collecting cash in the armored truck but they are stranded in the flood road. Jim (Morgan Freeman) leads a group of thieves looking to rob the the truck. They kill Charlie as Tom escapes with the money. Karen (Minnie Driver) knocks him out thinking he's a looter.

The story is contrived. Mikael Salomon is mostly a TV director. Compared to Graham Yost's earlier hit Speed, this has all the action but lacks the fun. Betty White is able to add a couple of laughs. The acting is perfectly fine although they're not doing any heavy lifting. The rainy water action gets a bit mind-numbing with its sameness.

Christian Slater plays an armored truck guard who has to deal with thieves, the crooked police, a fierce Indiana rainfall, and a flooded town while trying to protect three million dollars in the company vehicle. Well-done action flick isn't epic-scale, but does have many suspenseful close-calls and colorful characters, plus good performances by Slater, Morgan Freeman, Minnie Driver, and Richard Dysart and Betty White as an elderly couple who didn't evacuate when they were supposed to. Randy Quaid overplays heinously as a trigger happy sheriff, and the continual shootouts in the final third get repetitive, but this scenario (an entire town slowly being submerged) is exceptionally well-captured and the filmmakers didn't forget to add some good humor into the mix. **1/2 from ****