Hard Rain Review
by Christian Pyle (tlcclp AT aol DOT com)February 23rd, 1999
Hard Rain (1998)
A Review by Christian Pyle
In "Hard Rain," an armored car carrying $3M is caught in a flood. A gang of thieves led by Morgan Freeman attack, and the surviving guard (Christian Slater) must run off and hide the money. The gang pursues Slater through the flooded streets of a small, evacuated Indiana town. Along the way, he runs into a woman restoring a church (Minnie Driver), the sheriff (Randy Quaid), and a bickering old couple (Richard Dysart and Betty White). (Dysart and White provide excellent comic relief.) The various characters fight each other as the waters rise and the dam nears the breaking point.
Though burdened with the dumbest title in recent history, "Hard Rain" is an entertaining blend of the genres of disaster and action. It offers many thrills but little depth. The script by Graham Yost has the same strengths and weaknesses of his other work (which includes "Broken Arrow" and "Speed"): interesting premise and effective pacing but little attention to character, i.e. plenty of style, little substance. The lack of character development in "Hard Rain" seems especially disappointing because the characters are intriguing. The gang of thieves includes a kindly leader (Freeman), a slow-witted teen (Michael Goorjian), a Bible-quoting young man (Ricky Harris), and a school teacher (Dann Florek); I kept expecting this odd collection of people to be explained and developed. (It wasn't.)
So, what we have is action and thrills. The action moves well, and Slater and Driver find many opportunities to nearly drown. Director Mikael Salomon has experience making a movie in and under water; he served as cinematographer for James Cameron's "The Abyss."
Grade: C+
© 1999 Christian L. Pyle
<http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Christian+Pyle>
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
