#CraigBolotin

[adamwatchesmovies]

Black Rain (1989)

Is Black Rain a good movie? It’s hard to say. Some of it is so bad it’s good, some is legitimately good, and other aspects are just straight-up bad. It all comes together to make a film that’s enjoyable, but not very memorable.

In New York, officer Nick Conklin (Michael Douglas, who spends the entire film talking in police clichés) and his partner Charlie (Andy García) snag a Yakuza member named Sato (Yūsaku Matsuda) and help extradite him to Osaka. When he escapes at the Japanese airport, the two U.S. officers are determined to find the one that got away, which brings them at odds with the Japanese police.

I don’t understand what Craig Bolotin and Warren Lewis were thinking when they wrote the film's dialogue. When I say that Nick talks entirely in police clichés, I mean it. “He’s the kind of guy you want backing you up when the shit goes down.” The hero with the long string of honors, but the disdain for authority figures. Whenever he opens his mouth it’s “It ain’t easy out there”. “You want dirt, huh? You go to City Hall. Police Plaza. The whole goddamn system’s falling apart.” All he does is talk about how you’ve got to talk to your partner before you go to the suits, how he’s on the streets instead of a desk and therefore knows the deal better than everyone else, how nobody understands him and on and on. This is where the unintentional laughs come in. The man's a cartoon. It doesn’t matter if he’s on the streets of New York or in Japan, he believes that he’s got the experience that puts him on a higher level than everyone else. Not knowing Japanese? Being unable to read street signs? Those won't hinder investigating a crime in a place he’s never been to and knows nothing about. Even though the only people he can communicate with are the extraordinarily patient Japanese officers or randoms who just happen to speak English, he‘s going to be THE guy that cracks the case.

When dealing with the side characters, Black Rain is B-A-D. Nick's love interest, for example. She’s in two scenes so we can shoehorn a white woman in the heart of Osaka and hope they get together? Why? This movie is over 2 hours long. She could have easily been cut. I also feel unease about the fact that we have a police story in which two white officers come to a foreign country to solve their crime problem. I understand what they’re going with, but it’s not like they’re called in because the New York Mob is expanding its operation overseas. Why couldn’t the police from that country solve this problem? It just doesn’t sit well with me, even when hotshot Nick is paired up with calm and collected officer Masahiro Matsumoto (Ken Takakura) and they do the buddy cop thing (Though less comedically than in Rush Hour).

It’s frustrating. When you get to the main story, it’s great. We have all of these different elements to decipher and track down with members of the Yakuza double-crossing each other, feigning allegiance and cooperation while Sato is running circles around the police and managing his enemies as well. When Nick’s street smarts come into play and help him make some breakthroughs that others wouldn't have caught, you're anxious to see what's next. The climax is exciting and there’s plenty of material here to make you like the movie despite the ridiculous police stereotypes throughout.

This movie needed to be better, or worse. As is, it’s very much middle-of-the-road. Even the amusing bits - basically any scenes in which Nick unleashes a deluge of ridiculous words or that has him play the cop with the chip on his shoulder - you’ve seen before. If you see Black Rain on TV or you can rent it for like a dollar, I say "go ahead". it’s not so bad you’ll regret the time you spent viewing it. I can't say it's worth putting effort into either. (On DVD, September 4, 2015)