Fugindo do Inferno

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......

"I Come with the Rain" actually had potential to be something unique and memorable, but it failed to do so. And director Tran Anh Hung just didn't manage to create a movie that stood out.

Set in seedy and gritty Hong Kong, this movie had so much potential, but it just never took off. The pace of the movie was good, but it never really delved deep into the plot or storyline, and it seemed like a half-hearted attempt of making a film, to be bluntly honest.

Actually, the storyline was a confusing and scrambled mess of a storyline, and it seemed more like a series of randomly filmed sequences put together in the editing room to make a movie. I wonder if the script never had that crucial red thread throughout the plot, or it was the director who managed to lose the red thread along the way.

"I Come with the Rain" had some rather interesting and good names to the cast list, which include Byung-hun Lee, Shawn Yue, Elias Koteas and Josh Hartnett. However, they had so little to work with in terms of script and story that they were never really given a chance to shine on the screen.

I have watched "I Come with the Rain" twice now, with several years in between. But the movie has just failed to improve over the years. So I doubt that I will return to watch it a third time. "I Come with the Rain" suffered terribly under a confusing and scrambled mess of a storyline.

It was a shame, because "I Come with the Rain" really had potential to be so much more than just your less than average thriller. In fact, there was nothing thrilling about this movie.

Everything about this movie screamed for me to despise it. Yet this movie is like meeting a person whose appearance is ugly, yet whose inner beauty is unseen unless given a chance to shine. Dark.... nasty work with cuts of beauty. It just flows out in both directions, this movie got a 9 out of 10 from me.

Basically an ex-cop (Josh H.)named Kline who has seen and been overtaken by evil( a serial killer drives him insane over his investigation into this 24 mutilation killings then tortures Kline during a meeting,) is given the task of finding a lost son of a billionaire who turns out to be a new Christ figure, a saint. Which of these two meetings will have the most impact on Kline? Deep, slow and gory but oh so beautiful in a very disturbing way.

This is one of the best film I have watched. In fact, I watched it twice, and the second time on, I gave it a standing ovation. This film is a piece of art, just like a canvas to Tran Anh Hung ready to paint his imagination for the world to see. It may leave audience baffled after watching it, but you need to watch the details to know the story. This movie is Tran Anh Hung's interpretation of the Life of Christ, it is a fusion of mafia, rock, detective all roll into one. You can call it a misinterpretation of the Bible, but hey, this is art, he has the freedom to express himself. To me, this rocks more than The Passion of Christ, because it got substance.

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.