Black Rain

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.

Nick Conklin (Douglas) and Charlie Vincent (Garcia) are US cops who get involved in a Yakuza killing and capture a dangerous murderer Sato (Yasuka Matsuda). When delivering him to authorities in Japan, Sato escapes and Conklin and Vincent are forced to team up with Masahiro Matsumoto (Ken Takakura) in order to hunt him down. The clash in cultures creates tension as the investigation continues.

On the surface this is a mismatched partner movie that thinks it's more than that because it addresses issues of honour between culture. It is more than a buddy cop movie and manages to be a tense thriller and look at the clash of East & West. I'm not a Douglas fan but he does play the darker characters quite well and is pretty good here. Garcia is good but is really only a plot device when you look at his character. Takakura is strong in his role as the cop trying to hold to the ways of honour of his bosses but torn by the action methods of the West and Douglas. It is him who has to carry much of the moral weight of the film. Matsuda carries off Sato well and makes him more that a gangster character.

The real star of this is Scott's direction. He makes his city-scapes a present day version of Blade Runner - Japan is darkly dangerous and lit in neon. The direction is very stylish but can sometimes take away from the quality of the product and make it seem all style and no substance. Hans Zimmer score is as haunting as ever and fits the mood perfectly.

The story is perhaps a tad hackneyed and is not anything that different. Some of the East/West clash stuff doesn't work but it is still interesting to see the characters change to take elements of the other's cultures. The style and action carries the film well - any insight into culture differences is a nice bonus, overall an unoriginal idea is turned into a good film by good actors and a good director.

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.

Douglas, as a tough american detective and his partner played superbly by Andy Garcia chase down a murder suspect on his home turf- Tokyo An excellent movie that explores the culture shock felt by Douglas on his chase and the bureaucracy that tries to stop him..this violent tension filled film is not for the young ones but provides loads of action from the director of Blade Runner.. on a scale of one to ten... a 7

I saw this film on crappy pan and scan VHS when I was about 12 and I didn't really understand it and I wasn't really up on Ridley Scott's work. As a result, the impact of the film was somewhat lost on me. I was expecting an action film instead of a character drama with lots of police procedure. But now, older and wiser and with a brand new Blu Ray of the movie, I am finally able to appreciate how clever the film is.

The story unfortunately IS riddled with 80s Cop Movie clichés and goes through quite a lot of familiar motions. But if you see past that you'll appreciate the immense atmosphere and mood that Ridley Scott piles on. Simply put, Michael Douglas is Nick Conklin, a bad cop (pretty much the exact same character in Basic Instinct) who drag races on his superbike to pay alimony and pinches drug money instead of turning it in for evidence. Enjoying lunch with partner Charlie (Andy Garcia) in a steakhouse in New York's meat-packing district, they just happen to witness a Yakuza execution by wanted Japanese criminal Sato (Yusaku Matsuda, who was dying of cancer during filming and didn't tell anyone). After a quick punch-up and shoot-out they find themselves chaperoning Sato back to Osaka. But when they arrive there he manages to escape, leaving them embarrassed with lots of questions to answer.

Nick and Charlie find themselves in a very foreign and intolerant world and recapturing Sato proves to be difficult in many ways. Not the least of which is Japan's alienating culture (from an NYPD point of view) and rigid rules. Nonetheless, Nick is determined to catch Sato and restore his honor.

Like I said, the atmosphere of the film is overwhelming, which is really all the film needs. The clichés and stereotypes don't matter so much when you are involved this much. Hans Zimmer (his first film with Ridley Scott) provides a deeply emotional and very melodic score that'll be rattling around in your head for days. It's a shame it's never had a comprehensive CD release, as it's one of Zimmer's most impressive efforts.

You could call it a pretty 80s movies, but I still do feel that it holds up pretty well today. As one of Ridley Scott's more forgotten works, it's well worth checking out.