HARD RAIN: ‘I’ve been eating shit for breakfast, lunch, and dinner… Tonight I’m changing the menu’

Well its here gang! My first proper post. We’re going to take a look at Hard Rain today. The film sits at 28% on Rotten Tomatoes and was given 1 Star by Roger Ebert. More charitably Andrew Collins gave it 3 stars for Empire magazine. In truth, this film is not quite the steaming dung heap that I crave for this blog, being technically proficient and engaging in parts- indeed for a little while I was concerned that the first movie of my bad movie blog I had chosen something half decent. Fortunately I was soon disabused of that notion. I chose this film from that Pound Shop goldmine mostly on the basis of the decidedly ‘meh’ DVD boxart, and –more importantly- the one quote they chose for said box art- ‘“Non-stop Action Thriller”-Loaded’. And luckily my instincts paid off. In my view any movie that chooses to advertise itself with a quote from a Lad’s Mag like the now-defunct Loaded is unlikely to have troubled the Oscars.* Safe to say that, while this film is not total drek, it’s certainly not very good.

Hard Rain is a 1997 action film directed by Mikael Salomon and written by Graham Yost. It stars Christian Slater, Morgan Freeman, Minnie Driver and a number of other recognisable Hollywood actors. Indeed it’s a cast full of names you’ll recognise and was obviously shot with a decent budget. There is some spectacle to this film, with impressive scenes of flooding and destruction and moments of genuine tension. What lets it down is it’s terrible dialogue, characterisation and the fact that its’ tone staggers from serious to goofy like a birthday clown with anger management issues…

The film largely follows Christian Slater’s character Tom, a rookie employee of an armoured financial transport company. He and his partner Charlie (Ed Asner (and his magnificent eyebrows)), whom we later find out is his uncle, are moving money out of the banks of the improbably-named-but-actually-real Huntingburg, Indiana in preparation for major flooding.

The flood comes on quicker than they are prepared for and they are left stranded in their broken down truck. At this point, they are ambushed by what I can only describe as the world’s worst criminal gang. This gang of crooks make Pokemon’s Team Rocket, or two cockney henchman from 101 Dalmatians look like hardened and effective criminals. The only one of the four who exudes any real presence is the leader Jim- and this is largely because he’s Morgan Freeman, rather than being well-written or showing genuine menace. Indeed it is difficult to imagine why Freeman’s character would have brought along an ex-school teacher and two irritating youths on his million dollar retirement heist- although at least one of the youths’ presence is sort-of explained to be due to Freeman’s character knowing his father. And at least the youth’s death brings us what is surely the all-time great dying-in-your-arms final words of comfort: “I’d never shit ya kid. I’d never shit ya.”

From the ambush onward Slater’s character attempts to keep the $3 Million the truck was carrying safe, and keep himself alive in the process. Along the way he meets and forms a burgeoning romance with plucky Church-Restorer (!?) Karen (Minnie Driver), finds out his Uncle Charlie was working with Jim and his gang of morons, gets double crossed by the crooked Town Sherriff (Randy Quaid in what might be the most competent performance in the film),* and does a whole lot of shooting. Oh and also Betty White is there with a shotgun.

The film ends in a climactic, boats-based shootout where all the baddies die and the good guys survive. Freeman’s character gets to live, though doesn’t get any money, and Christian Slater gets to be the honest, hard-working armoured truck employee his uncle believed he could be; in a plot point that was largely abandoned in favour of explosions and twists that made little sense. All in all though, what really affects this films is: it’s boring. Despite it genuinely succeeding in creating an environment where it looks like a small town is underwater, the whole thing stretches belief largely because none of the characters or their motivations are explored. Every time you think you’re about to get some interesting depth, the film abandons the attempt like a it never wanted to try in the first place. As such, you don’t really care what happens to any of these people, or hell, even the town itself.

Some Stuff I liked in this film:

-Morgan Freeman bursting out of the water to surprise attack some crooked cops whilst duel wielding pistols. Basically the most gangster shit I’ve ever seen.

-Christian Slater slow-mo uppercutting a crook whilst breaching the surface of the water like a goddamned Killer Whale with arms.  

-Minnie Driver raising one eyebrow in indication of interest in Slater’s character. It made me feel funny.

Some stuff I didn’t like: (Content Warning: Sexual Assault)

-For some reason the film felt the need to have Minnie Driver’s character come close to being sexually assaulted by one of the crooked cops. It added absolutely nothing character-wise, made no sense in context and, despite being fairly euphemistic rather than explicit, felt gratuitous.

-Betty White was wasted, after a promisingly shit-talking start, as the butt of a joke about hen-pecked husbands and their overbearing wives that the writers presumably dug out of a time capsule from the 1950s.

-The forced ‘banter’ between the good guys and the laughable attempts at villainous one-liners given to the baddies- see the line that began this post for a particularly baffling example.

Okay gang that’s about it! Thanks for reading, I’ll be posting again next week. For Hard Rain I will say this: It was bad. But not good bad. Just bad. And wasted a frankly pretty decent cast.

Though I will never forget Christian Slater’s aqua-uppercut.

-Tom

All copyright belongs to its respective holders. Pictures reproduced here are for entertainment purposes only!

*I’m sorry Loaded I’m only joking. I’m sure the five remaining people who haven’t discovered Pornhub miss you terribly.

**I looked up Randy Quaid as a brief bit of research for this post and HOLY SHIT is there some stuff going on with him: https://www.newsweek.com/randy-quaids-close-video-washed-psycho-bette-middler-creeps-out-twitter, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2016/06/24/the-sad-strange-saga-of-independence-day-hero-randy-quaid/

Ed Asner picture from: http://www.aveleyman.com/ActorCredit.aspx?ActorID=639