Directed by Mikael Salomon
Written by Graham Yost
Production Design by J. Michael Riva
Cinematography by Peter Menzies, Jr.
Edited by Amnon David, Paul Hirsch, and Gillian L. Hutshing
Music by Christopher Young
Starring
Minnie Driver as Church Restorationist
Christian Slater as Junior Armored Car Guy
Ed Asner as Senior Armored Car Guy
Peter Murnik as Good Cop
Randy Quaid as Bad Cop
Mark Rolston as Yikes Cop
Morgan Freeman as Outlaw Leader
Dann Florek as Proto-Walter White
Ricky Harris as Young Outlaw Who Quotes the Bible
Michael Goorjian as Young Outlaw Who Fucks Up A Lot
Wayne Duvall as Dam Technician
Richard Dysart as Flood Victim (Husband)
Betty White as Flood Victim (Wife)
. . .
"At least we're out of the rain . . ."
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
Hard Rain is a combination heist/disaster flick that turbo-bombed with audiences and critics all over planet Earth back in 1998. Basically, outlaws use a flood disaster situation out in Indiana somewheres to give cover to their illegal activities . . . gee, there must be an easier way to go a-thieving, eh? Maybe they're just in it for the action. Like, the challenge of pulling off such a bonkotits crazy heist in the middle of a flooding city is its own reward to these yahoos.
Characterizations are pared down to the absolute minimum, so everything here kinda hinges on the look and public persona of the actors hired for the parts:
Morgan Freeman is wily and authoritative as the head thief. Ed Asner is old and grizzled as an armored car driver. Christian Slater-Asner's junior partner-seemingly uses cocaine superpowers to hold his breath forever as he swims underwater once the water line rises. Randy Quaid is a cleaned-up cop version of the redneck dumbfuck he plays in those National Lampoon flicks. Minnie Driver is beautiful and smart and an ace with a Swiss Army Knife as a church restorationist, and no, she doesn't quite get shoehorned into a love interest for Slater. Driver and Slater's dynamic is actually pretty fun, more like Leon and Claire from the video game Resident Evil 2. They're basically strangers who partner up to survive the night. You've got a variety of 'That Guy' actors filling out the rest of the cast, most notably Dann Florek as a high school science teacher gone rogue-basically, proto-Walter White-who learned from one of his students how to manufacture portable, waterproofed explosive devices. "Science, bitch!" indeed.
Outlaws and cops both turn out to be crooks in this one. Just like in real life. Quaid's sheriff character is set up as a resentful, underpaid public servant who takes advantage of the chaos of the flood to score a big payday. Quaid's performance is pretty fun to watch, actually, as are his two fellow deputies who each have secret sides surfaced by the flood. Hard Rain takes an extremely cynical view of human nature which I find agreeable.
Hard Rain's characters are adequate. What sticks in the memory are the impressively scaled sequences of flood disaster action, which look to be mostly physical with some computer graphics and miniatures deployed in just the right proportion. Lotta cool underwater sequences filled with a bewildering amount of detail, including lots of swirling debris. A staggering amount of physical production is on display here. The scenes where characters have to escape drowning go beyond believability and into the nightmare surrealism of Argento's Inferno. It's fun without being plausible-surely all of these foolish characters would drown-and this may be a dealbreaker for some-or even most-potential audiences.
Hard Rain's problem is that it's a heist flick trapped inside an elaborate apocalyptic deluge movie. Its best moments-a jetski chase through the halls of a submerged high school; a shootout in a church assailed by both water(heaven) and fire(hell) like something out of William Blake; a watery cemetery standoff; an aquatic search through a drowned house-are better suited to a science fiction video game. It's not badly done. It's just overkill, y'know? These people worked way too hard for such an unbalanced end result. You've got minutely detailed water traversals, escapes, and environments, but then you have a sedentary armored car guard who can hold his breath underwater forever. Maybe he's an Olympic swim team alternate on his days off? It sets up a complex situation, but then throws most of the detail away in order to have certain characters miraculously survive. It establishes a dark and cynical worldview, but then shitcans all of that for a cornball final shot. Hard Rain is confounding.
Still . . . it does Waterworld better than Waterworld. You could even watch 'em back to back for extra shits'n'giggles. A double bomb. Which sounds like a video game power up, don't it? Truly, I am indeed shitting, and I am in fact giggling as I watch it on a portable screen. And so can you, Dear Reader!
