Lluvia negra

Two American Detectives arrest a member of The Yakuza, and arrange to transport him back to Tokyo. When they arrive in Tokyo, they are outsmarted, and the criminal is sprung, they stay in Japan to bring him to justice.

When you read exactly what is in the mix, Ridley Scott, Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia, Oscar nominations, even the great Hans Zimmer providing the music, you'd think you were in for a classic, and I'd argue that's exactly what Black Rain is.

Ridley Scott is known for delivering hard hitting, bleak epics, and Black Rain is no exception, don't expect many lighter moments, they are few and far between, do expect action, grit, pace and a great story.

The clash of cultures makes it a very interesting watch, we have the brash, gung ho Americans up against the cultured and methodical Japanese.

The cast do a first rate job, I may be somewhat biased, but I'm a huge fan of Michael Douglas, and he's terrific here.

Lots of 1980's glamour, Kate Capshaw looks incredible in almost every scene, Garcia cuts a pretty dashing figure also.

It's a film that has aged pretty well.

9/10.

Americans - quite arrogant are they not? Well not all of course, but Michael Douglas or rather the character he's portraying is quite the prime example of an arrogant specimen. Some may argue that he has the qualities to be like that, but showing off some respect wouldn't hurt him or his colleagues.

Having said that, the culture clash is quite apparent. But also how both sides come together. The movie may be a bit too long for some, but saying Ridley Scott is not technically sound or doesn't know what he's doing, would be a mistake. And having a cast that delivers like that is quite something. Andy Garcia having the time of his life, playing the "sane" one. The karaoke sequence is quite mesmerizing ... which is important for other inevitable character building stuff.

Tension is holding from start to finish too. Which isn't an easy feet ... and the end sequence is quite nicely made. Predictable, but very well done indeed

Black Rain is an absolutely gorgeous movie to look at. And for the most part it's highly entertaining and well acted - the guy playing Sato is brilliantly menacing. But occasionally, very occasionally, it descends into either complete predictability or downright cheesiness. A motorbike chase, well, that's a surprise! And that award ceremony right near the end - why? It's totally irrelevant, feel good factor nonsense - the sort of stuff you get with bog standard action movies. And this is not bog standard, and not really an action movie. Certainly underrated and deserving of a better audience than it has received, but ultimately let down by a few lapses in quality.

I was searching a review from a Japanese reviewer and found one, very tough with the film. It made me react here.

First, I consider myself as neutral as nor American nor Japanese even if I know those two fascinating countries inhabitants a little. And I did not feel the same the Japanese reviewer did. In my sense the film does not mock Japan. It does not show Japan as 'inferior' but as different. And this is all the interest of this film whose purpose in my opinion is to show the opposite mentalities and culture. Both sides are presented. The bad and the good ones.

The Bad : Japoneses are showed as ridiculous with red tape and bureaucracy matters, with shy behaviors, weird violence (for occidental people). But Americans too. Those are presented as brutal stupid beasts, for example when Charlie Vincent run after a motorbike without understanding the trap is going into or when Nick Conklin does not manage to restrain himself from knocking everywhere. Or when Nick signs a stupid sheet of paper without distrust. The two Americans are also presented as arrogant as they don't even think that foreigners could speak English .. because they don't imagine it is even possible. Even the American/Japanese prostitute rejects their arrogance. Also American police is presented as corrupted and messy ... So no one wins here I guess.

The good : Japaneses are also presented as good. Cops are straight but cooperative and honor respectful, mainly instructed, efficient. Even if they lack of adaptiveness and are bad inspired to reject the American cops help. The mafia is well presented too. Franckly, they really are scary guys but gain respect with their honor code. Sato is impressive.

Here I agree with the Japanese reviewer : The Americans are glorified (music helps :). Nick manages on his own (yet with the help of Mas) to solve a difficult case in a country he obviously even doesn't know. This is clearly the weakness of the film.

Yet what I really appreciated was the oppositions between Mas and Nick. Wiseness and honor of Mas, for example when he feels insulted by Nicks thief behavior or when he learns from Nick. Humanity and pugnacity of Nick.

I also liked mafia's leader speech with Nick. Here we definitively can't say the film only runs for America, obviously.

One regret. We definitively see too little of Japan. Even if the film does much in presenting a country that we mainly bad know in occident, it could have done more. That said, I think this was not the purpose of the director who just wanted to focus on mindsets.

Another regret : the ridiculous sounds of the motorbikes especially in the beginning of the film and in the last scene.

The actors are all perfect. The soundtrack is really cool. Contrarily to the Japanese reviewer, I appreciated the way the director represents Japan, with subtlety, as Japan is all about. And USA with strength, as USA are all about too, sometimes too much :). If the oppositions between the two countries are exaggerated, it is in the purpose of showing them better and make understand, I guess. This is a 'must-be-watched' film for me. One of the best of Ridley Scott.

I think Black Rain (BR) is almost criminally underrated within the buddy cop and dramatic noir genre.

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 really feels lost in time to me with a current IMDB rating of only 6+, 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 Japanese actors involved. All of them were big stars in their home country at the time (especially Ken Takakura, but also Yusaku Matsuda and Tomisaburo Wakayama). They are even allowed to speak Japanese, how refreshing. Given how badly the Hollywood movie machine has treated Asia as one big pool of people (as if the entire continent was one country) in many blockbusters (even to this very day), this still feels refreshing and authentic.

• Strangely enough, the movie was labeled as "racist" or at least condescending towards Japan and its citizens by some Western movie critics at the time. These critics don't seem to be able to distinguish between Michael Douglas' movie character (Nick, a NYPD cop with obvious flaws and issues) and the movie as a fictional piece of art. Just because a main character has racist tendencies and outbursts doesn't make a movie xenophobic. Michael Douglas himself had the best response to these allegations in a short "making of" BTS interview about BR. He called up the movie critic in question (who had labeled BR as "full of stereotypes" and "racist"). The critic admitted that he never ever visited Japan in his life. In addition, BR also was nominated for best foreign film in Japan in 1990: Japan Academy Film Prize for Outstanding Foreign Language Film.

• Michael Douglas' cop character Nick Conklin quite obviously is a "flawed and/or broken hero" type, that much is made clear right out of the gates in NYC. An anti-hero as a leading character was a very rare breed in mainstream Hollywood blockbusters at the time (and still is, even to this day). There are lots of such grey areas in the entire BR movie, no clear (and overly simplistic) black vs white, or good vs bad. Nick behaves like the ugly American bull in a Japanese pottery shop, but viewers will still root for him and his junior partner (a young Andy Garcia). Ken Takakura's character Masahiro (or simply 'Mas' in their cop lingo) is a true additional gem complementing the two NYPD cops - their joint Karaoke scene in a nightclub remains a highlight of the film. Masahiro is treated on the same level, even if he has fewer spoken lines in the movie, he is not just another local sidekick. Again, very refreshing for Hollywood standards, even decades later.

• We also have to remember the geo-political tensions back in 1980-1990, especially post Plaza Accord in 1985. The U. S. and Japan (even after they became unlikely allies post-WWII) were huge economic rivals, vying for the global top spot as business and technology superpowers back in the day. This may be hard to believe for younger readers, but Japan seemed unstoppable at the time. Many Western experts predicted that Japan would soon overtake the U. S. GDP in absolute terms - even with a much smaller population size - and that the U. S. would become highly dependent on Japanese capital and technology. You can compare these tensions with a similar rivalry between China and the U. S. in current times, including trade wars, tariff barriers and currency clashes. Keep all of this in mind when you watch BR decades later.

• BR's film title also has a very deep, hidden meaning feeding into the bitter rivalry and war history between the two countries. This meaning is only revealed to Nick's character towards the end of the movie. The monologue by Tomisaburo Wakayama (Sugai) in front of his fireplace (a fitting decor) is a masterpiece in itself, it accurately summarizes the creation of modern Japan post-WWII in a few powerful sentences (national identity crisis and long economic boom, a phoenix rising from the ashes). When has another Hollywood blockbuster ever managed to achieve that?

• The atmosphere of the movie (mainly set in Osaka, Japan, with a few opening scenes in NYC) is simply fantastic. There are many visual throwbacks to Blade Runner's futuristic megalopolis (the SF classic Ridley Scott directed back in 1982) in BR's Osaka skyline and indoor settings, featuring plenty of neon signs, light reflections, smoke, rain and a buzzing nightlife.

• There is no cheap and artificial romance side-plot tacked on to BR (as one might fear after initial scenes in a nightclub in Osaka). This is a straightforward male-dominated cop movie set in Japan's late 1980s bubble economy era, plain and simple. Kate Capshaw as Joyce has an important, but very minor (in terms of screen time) "translating" role for Nick. Other than that, it's a male world. I don't mind. Not every movie needs to have a balanced set of characters. Many of today's movies try to please everyone while actually pleasing no one. Case in point: I equally enjoyed and highly rate Ridley Scott's "Thelma & Louise" (1991) with two very strong female leads. Nobody would argue that "Thelma & Louise" required more male characters. I used this simple example on purpose since both movies were made by the same director and shot just a few years apart. How many other Hollywood scripts would have made Nick fall in love with a fake modern-day Geisha character towards the end of the movie? Or at least exploited an affair? BR steers clear of all these cheap blockbuster pitfalls. The ambiguity between Nick and Joyce further adds to the allure of the movie, there is no simple back and white.

• There are many other blockbuster traps BR manages to avoid as a cop movie. The action in BR is quite realistic, up to the slightly more bombastic finale. Nick is not mowing down rows of dumb enemies, unfortunately a common theme in 1980s action hits featuring the likes of Stallone or Schwarzenegger (the script could have easily fallen into that trap given Michael Douglas' image as a superstar at the time, fresh from winning an Oscar in 1988 in "Wall Street"). In fact, Nick wouldn't be able to play a "super cop" in BR even if he possessed all their (completely unrealistic) skills. BR's plot cleverly limits the number of weapons and ammunition available to him. His own superficial macho image is deconstructed further in the most emotional key scene of BR (involves motorcycles and roll shutters, no spoiler). Nick gets trapped, reduced to a spectator role, unable to help or call for help. Out of bullets and out of ideas, like a human "fish out of water" in modern-day Japan.

• The foreign backdrop serves as a giant mirror for anti-hero Nick to discover his character flaws and more generally reflect on his life's choices, which in turn leads him to accept and then respect his local counterpart Masahiro. (The self-finding aspect of Nick's character reminded me of "Lost In Translation" (2003), even if the two films have nothing in common apart from the setting). I would have loved to see Ridley Scott's initial BR cut as a disc extra. It was reportedly over 35 minutes longer and likely gave even more opportunities to develop the main characters. On the other hand, 2h 5m feels perfect as a compromise (Scott had initially cut BR down to 1h 50m).

• Finally, the ending is equally fitting for a cop movie. No long speeches or prolonged fluff once the suspenseful story arc is completed. A joke, a great smile, another smile back, a hand gesture. Then the credits roll. That is just great cinema, to this very day.

Try to watch BR in a home cinema setting or at least on a big TV screen, the moody settings and the beautiful cinematography ask for this. This is definitely not a movie for a small TV screen or a tablet.

If you want more of the same themes and settings after watching BR? One obvious answer is Sydney Pollack's neo-noir gangster movie "The Yakuza" (1974). You will again find a younger Ken Takakura (many label him the Japanese Clint Eastwood) in the cast. This dated movie probably marked the first time many people in Western countries were introduced to the term "Yakuza" for Japanese mobsters and Japan's underground crime scene in general.

Or try the excellent new streaming series "Tokyo Vice" (2022-2024, two seasons). Interesting side note: Some BR film crew members were once again involved in the production team for TV in Japan many decades later. Both BR and TV are covering similar plot elements (culture clashes between the Japanese and Western Gaijin, Yakuza gangs and Japanese detectives, moody Japanese big city and nightlife settings - as well as the social circles operating and working in these nocturnal settings, also known as the "mizu shobai" trade in Japan).

I therefore wouldn't start watching "Tokyo Vice" without seeing BR first. "The Yakuza" is a good gateway for BR. BR then almost feels like a perfect introduction to the "Tokyo Vice" series. Or in summary: It's probably best to enjoy all three movies/series by order of their respective release dates.

Rating: 8+/10 for general audiences. 9+/10 for viewers with some interest in Japan, Japanese culture or contemporary Japanese history.