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Drama, Action, Thriller 125 min R
Rotten Tomatoes56%Metacritic56IMDb
An American cop in Japan. Their country. Their laws. Their game. His rules.
Two New York cops get involved in a gang war between members of the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia. They arrest one of their killers and are ordered to escort him back to Japan. However, in Japan he manages to escape, and as they try to track him down, they get deeper and deeper into the Japanese Mafia scene and they have to learn that they can only win by playing the game—the Japanese way.
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Resolved, plot-driven, effortless and meticulous.
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Written by TMDB members; each links to the original. Not part of Taste Buds's numbers.
"Black Rain" is in the overly familiar territory Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood used to inhabit during the 1970's and 1980's and as you would expect the old assortment of cliches are all here, especially those surrounding Michael Douglas's tough and uncompromising character Nick Conklin. The very notion of a hot headed American cop arriving in Japan and enthusiastically creating all manner of chaos by repeatedly eschewing the political and social protocols and conventions of the country and stubbornly bulldozing his way to a successful resolution of the case is also a common pattern of unorthodox behaviour to be expected. However, Japan is a visually diverting location at all times and Ridley Scott is on top form when it comes to bringing all the action scenes vividly to life on the screen. This film is frequently comprised of cliches and yet the final result is nevertheless invigorating and entertaining.
Read the whole review on TMDBFirst things first: My review is detailed and long, but it contains NO MAJOR SPOILERS, you can still enjoy the plot unfolding after reading it. I think Black Rain (BR) is almost criminally underrated within the buddy cop and dramatic noir genre.reading it. The "underrated" moniker also applies because most of the cast and other key people involved (Sir Ridley Scott, Michael Douglas, music score by a (at the time) young and still largely unknown Hans Zimmer) may be better known today for all their later achievements. BR feels like lost in time with a current TMDB rating of only 60+%, hidden behind all their other successes and awards. You don't have to take my word for this. Michael Douglas himself stated in later interviews that BR to this day remains one of his favorite movies he was involved in (and he certainly enjoyed a long and storied movie career, including Academy Awards). While BR, at its core, is a classic 1980s cop movie (you can clearly see the movie is from another era when people openly smoke on a passenger plane...) with a pretty straightforward and simple plot, it was very much ahead of its time in many ways in my opinion: Shot on location in Japan, with many Japan
Read the whole review on TMDBThe fact that the words "produced in association with Michael Douglas" appear on the credits before the name of the director (Ridley Scott) tells us much of what we need to know about this crime thriller. It is a project for and about Michael Douglas and it isn't very good. He ("Conklin") is a New York cop, and a bent one at that. Together with his oppo "Charlie" (Andy Garcia) he witnesses a Yakuza killing in a restaurant. Apprehending the culprit, they are tasked with repatriating him to Japan but manage to cock up the prisoner delivery when the plane lands. Determined to track down his miscreant escapee, he now proceeds to treat the local law enforcement with an arrogant disdain that ought to have found him neatly at the end of a Samurai sword. Of course, though, he is the hero - so the plot gradually swivels the characterisations round so he starts to look the decent, intuitive police officer whom the incompetent, hapless, Tokyo officers have needed all along. Luckily, Garcia gets to take an early bath which leaves us with a very weak supporting cast, a few scenes from a completely unnecessary Kate Capshaw ("Joyce") before an ending that made this legendary and lethal criminal f
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