Black Rain (1989)

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General		Extras
Category	Action	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1989
Running Time	120:08
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (64:46)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Programme
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Ridley Scott
Studio Distributor	Paramount Home Entertainment	Starring	Michael Douglas Andy Garcia Ken Takakura Kate Capshaw Yusaku Matsuda Shigeru Kôyama John Spencer Guts Ishimatsu Yuya Uchida Tomisaburo Wakayama Miyuki Ono Luis Guzman
Case	?
RPI	$39.95	Music	Hans Zimmer

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Hungarian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Czech Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	Turkish Italian Spanish English English for the Hearing Impaired French German Swedish Danish Dutch Icelandic Croatian Norwegian Portuguese Finnish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes, Pepsi can
		Action In or After Credits	No

    As entertainment, Black Rain is at best a moderate success. Nick Conklin (Michael Douglas) is a tough New York City homicide cop. How tough? Well, it seems that fighting crime on the streets of NYC is not exciting enough for Nick, who challenges motorcycle thugs to insane drag races for cash in his spare time. And when he's not outside dodging bullets, Nick dodges accusations of professional misconduct when Internal Affairs grills him about missing drug money. He plays dumb, but we know better. Our contempt for this arrogant adrenaline junkie is defused somewhat by the fact that part of his illicit income goes to his ex-wife and children. The charms of Nick's friend Charlie Vincent (Andy Garcia) also help us to see him in a sympathetic light. The story proper takes flight when Nick and Charlie witness the gory murders of two Yakuza gangsters by the sinister but well-dressed Sato (Yusaku Matsuda), who is apprehended by Nick after a thrilling chase sequence. An improbable twist has Nick and Charlie assigned to escort Sato to the authorities in Osaka, Japan. However, like Nick's game of solitaire on the plane trip over, things don't quite go according to plan.

    Although the plot of this buddy-cop feature is formulaic, the cast add the sparks required to keep the audience engaged. Michael Douglas plays the mercenary loner perfectly, a role he's done more than once. (In fact, he was also called "Nick" in Basic Instinct and The Game.) Andy Garcia functions well as his adorable and culturally informed side-kick, who conveniently demonstrates that just because Nick is a racist b******, the movie makers are not. Ken Takakura, a veteran of 94 films since 1961, plays Inspector Mashahiro Matsumoto. As Nick and Charlie's guide through the bowels of Osaka, he takes the brunt of Nick's xenophobic ignorance, which is a kind of pathetic way for Japan's movie legend to meet his Hollywood equivalent. Naturally they bond later in the piece, for instance when Mas teaches Nick-san how to eat noodles, but the sour taste remains. Kate Capshaw (soon to be seen in Indiana Jones IV, or maybe not) as expatriate Joyce is not given much to do besides wearing body-squeezing dresses and feeding Nick exposition about the local Yakuza. However, Yusaku Matsuda is fantastic as Sato. He plays this villain with an understated, reptilian menace. I thought the way he hissed open-mouthed at his antagonists was pretty cool. Unfortunately, Matsuda died from bladder cancer (?) just after doing Black Rain. Anyway, the inevitable showdown between Nick and Sato recalls the ridiculous motorcycle duel in Mission Impossible II, but by this stage Ridley Scott has us well and truly hooked.

    The Ridley Scott artistic pretensions. Love them? Hate them? Love to hate them? They are all here in abundance, and I lapped them up like a Pavlovian dog on a Pal binge. Camera filters across the Manhattan skyline. Designer steam issuing from vents. Impeccably directed action sequences. Dramatic deep focus shots. Monochrome colour palettes. Fiddly Ridley likes his visuals, and in Black Rain he even inserts references to his prescient masterpiece Blade Runner, with Osaka ablaze with neon and aerial shots of an industrial wasteland. The signature Ridley Scott violence is amply displayed too: a throat slashing, finger chopping, hand stabbing, bullet hits, and a decapitation. The constant threat of being killed by something sharp adds tension to the proceedings as Nick and Charlie try to avoid being sliced into human sashimi.

    Some obligatory philosophising, another Ridley Scott staple, rounds out this bloated, beautiful, perversely satisfying movie. Nick, during the course of his private investigations, urges Joyce to "choose a side" when the time comes to stick her neck out, a sentiment that could also apply to Nick's own loose morals. By the final reel, Mashahiro appears to have reformed Nick-san in the ways of honour, but only after Mas rejects his work ethics and adopts Nick's own credo "sometimes you've got to forget your head and grab your balls", all of which failed to score writers Craig Bolotin (Miami Vice) and Warren Lewis (13th Warrior) an Academy Award script gong, but hey, it's perfectly adequate for a Scott production.

Video

    After zooming the 4:3 image to fill my TV screen, I noticed a horrible amount of edge enhancement as the main titles appeared, around Michael Douglas at 1:20 and 5:33, and surrounding Sato like a false angelic halo at 12:29. These are only a few examples. On the whole, the image is brittle and stark, with an attendant lack of shadow detail. Sharpness on my monitor was adequate given that the Super-35 frame was expanded, though it fell short of current standards. 16x9 enhancement would make a significant improvement. Occasionally, the picture looked balanced, glossy and smooth, allowing Jan de Bont's expert cinematography to shine.

    Colours within the warm palette translated well enough through space to my retina. Pushing the saturation up moderately produced a richer image, which was perhaps closer to what the filmmakers intended. As they are, the colours appear dulled, similar to a free-to-air broadcast bandwidth, and better than VHS. Mercifully colour bleed and low level noise were absent: two additional problems this transfer did not need.

    Film artefacts were also scarce thanks to a relatively clean source print, apart from film grain that is. Between 98:22 and 98:29 a transparent blue-white haze intrudes upon the far left side of the frame (its ghostly presence can be seen intermittently all the way through), and some gross aliasing showed up when a shotgun is thrown to the ground at Nick's feet at 97:31. The left third of the frame also seems to be squeezed horizontally, judging by the uneven size of the letters in the opening title cards.

    The layer change at 64:46 was mildly disruptive.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Dialogue was always intelligible and synchronised with the visuals. Instances of ADR were obvious only if you watched for them.

    The original synth music by new Ridley Scott favourite Hans Zimmer (Black Hawk Down, Gladiator, Hannibal) both compliments the action and lays down a framework for the 1980s songs that punctuate the narrative. Separation across the front sound stage was pleasingly crisp: melodies with Oriental influences and busy runs of percussion got split between the left and right channels, and bass notes were centred with the vocals. Some of the pop songs included numbers by Iggy Pop, Bobby Darin and UB40. The opening four-four rock dirge, apparently an ode to our antihero Nick, is particularly nauseating in that big-hair-'n'-leather way.

    The Oscar-nominated sound effects also focused on the front sound stage. While the fidelity, frequency response and directionality was excellent, the dynamic range was just below what you would expect from a new 5.1 mix. Still, Black Rain holds up well considering its vintage and the minimal work done for its DVD debut. Motorbike engines and spinning tires in the opening action set piece roar and squeal effectively. Gun blasts, shattering glass, scraping steel and car crashes also reverberate noisily throughout the film, setting your nerves on edge.

    Behind the listener, the rear speakers mumbled just enough to tease the front stage away from the screen. Low frequency effects from the subwoofer kicked in frequently to assist bass drum pulses, add rumble to engine sounds, and background hum in the steel plant.

    All in all, this largely two dimensional 5.1 sound track makes up for the video shortcomings. It is clear, however, that Black Rain needs a major overhaul in all departments before we can see and hear the film in all its MTV flash and thunder. As things stand, the audio quality reproduces the original cinema experience faithfully, with the extra oomph of Dolby Digital.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menus

    6/3/2012: The Blu-ray has just hit the shelves after being broadcast on free-to-air digital television. My guess is that the Blu-ray trumps the broadcast specs, but with a high retail price, most punters will probably wait for a price-drop, or, despite the awful Aussie TV ad regime, keep watching the TV version.

    It seems that we have inherited the same poor non-anamorphic video transfer from the US DVD release and possibly (gulp) the laserdisc. The audio quality is solid and there are no missing extras to be jealous of. Assuming that Black Rain did average business at the box office, a special edition won't be appearing any time soon. One speculates that Black Rain made its premature arrival on DVD in Region 4 to ride the wave of other Ridley Scott uccesses, the restoration and imminent release of Legend SE chief among them. But will we ever see The Duelists on a silvery disc?

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall