This had the potential to be a good movie -- the basic premise, about a phoney medium who starts to experience real premonitions, was interesting, the actors were excellent, and the gloomy atmosphere of an economically-depressed rural South came through loud and clear -- but it just didn't go anywhere.
The movie came off like more of a soapbox for the writer's leftist, secular humanist views than anything. For example, there's a scene in which the psychic starts telling an auditorium of blue-collar workers that if only they were to stop believing in God and the afterlife, they could start to build a better world here on earth.
The problem with such propositions is that they don't square with reality. The further we've moved from religion, the baser we've become. Unlike the churchgoing villain of this film, real-life Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was a fan of Richard Dawkins, not of the Bible. Becoming more honest with ourselves and each other by dispensing with our ideals (or, as the writer would probably see it, our hypocrisy) doesn't mean that the world will become a better place. Better a Henry Ford than a Gordon Gekko.
Black Rainbow didn't spend enough time developing its characters to justify the frequently grandiose, overwrought, overly-intellectual dialogue. The story, which with a little more work would've resulted in a first-class supernatural thriller, was given a backseat to the incessant moralizing.
Too bad Lee Ving wasn't cast as the hit man. That role would've fit him like a black glove!
6 out of 10 stars.
The movie came off like more of a soapbox for the writer's leftist, secular humanist views than anything. For example, there's a scene in which the psychic starts telling an auditorium of blue-collar workers that if only they were to stop believing in God and the afterlife, they could start to build a better world here on earth.
The problem with such propositions is that they don't square with reality. The further we've moved from religion, the baser we've become. Unlike the churchgoing villain of this film, real-life Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was a fan of Richard Dawkins, not of the Bible. Becoming more honest with ourselves and each other by dispensing with our ideals (or, as the writer would probably see it, our hypocrisy) doesn't mean that the world will become a better place. Better a Henry Ford than a Gordon Gekko.
Black Rainbow didn't spend enough time developing its characters to justify the frequently grandiose, overwrought, overly-intellectual dialogue. The story, which with a little more work would've resulted in a first-class supernatural thriller, was given a backseat to the incessant moralizing.
Too bad Lee Ving wasn't cast as the hit man. That role would've fit him like a black glove!
6 out of 10 stars.