Nick Conklin is a corrupt cop on the fast track to nowhere when he is tasked with bringing rogue Yakuza Koji Sato (Yūsaku Matsuda) back to Japan.
When Sato escapes, Conklin is forced to join forces with local officer Masahiro "Mas" Matsumoto (Ken Takakura) to track him down…
I was born in Japan around the time this movie was being made.
I have not been able to go back since.
This movie always felt like a snapshot of the world when I was born. Not the exact location (I was not born in Osaka), but it carries a specific charge for me - like one of those ice-core samples with atmosphere from a millenia past.
In this case, some of that atmosphere is pretty toxic: Black Rain is one of the primary cinematic texts for capturing the anti-Japanese sentiment from the period. Ironically, this was the end of Japan’s postwar economic boom, but as Japanese companies made their way into the American market, it was accompanied by fear of a peaceful Japanese take-over of industry and technology.
For Ridley Scott, it feels like closing a loop, as Scott places his action against contemporary backdrops of neon and hi-tech media projection that evoke the look he developed for Blade Runner.
This is a movie where the story is beside the point.
Beyond its aesthetic pleasures and atmosphere, Black Rain is a pretty generic cop thriller.
Michael Douglas is good casting as a corrupt cop, less as a fish-out-of-water we are supposed to empathise with. He is too convincing as a xenophobic asshole and I never bought his redemption.
I found it hard to track his arc, and it feels like the movie has been cut down (Douglas’s relationship with Kate Capshaw’s character seems to be significantly chopped down).
The real standouts are Andy Garcia and Ken Takakura - Garcia might have been better casting as the lead, and Takakura is affecting as the local cop who joins forces with Douglas.
A good-looking movie about the place of my birth, and that is about it.
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