Black Rain (1989) ("I Love the 80s" Edition; CD Included; Sensormatic)

Me Don't Understand You -- Shoot!

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Feb 20, 2001

Where did Ridley Scott go wrong? He burst onto the scene w/ amazing films like Alien and Blade Runner but what has he donesince?Black Rain is a derivative cop movie that just happens to takeplace in Tokyo. The stylish Tokyo architecture and neon-li...tstreets allow Ridley to indulge in his trademark fantastic scenarios. But it's not nearly as fantastic as Blade Runner(I guess the present is not as exciting as the future.) Therelationship between the American Douglas and the Japanesexxxx is formulaic; they don't understand each other's culturesso they fight against each other while the bad guy commits morecrimes. That's just the backdrop for what will be many scenesyou've seen before in cop movies of this nature.The only interesting part of the movie is Douglas's admissionof stealing money to support his family. Suddenly, he's not the saint the director has made him out to be and the admissioncreates a REAL conflict between he & his Japanese counterpart.Stealing goes against xxx's moral code and yet he's bound towork w/ Douglas. It's unfortunate the movie didn't revolve around these types of moral/social problems as opposed to thesuperficial "I don't understand your culture, nor do I care to"attitude.All in all, I was excited to see this movie and utterly disappointedwith the results. The ingredients were there for a far moreconvincing movie particularily if it would've examined themoral and social differences between the two cultures in moredepth. Yes, it's an action movie, but a lousy one b/c you'vealready seen every action scene in a different movie. Read more Less