Well, yes. The curious thing about Hard Rain is that it's so well presented but at the same time it's so superficial and false. I have to admit that I was impressed with the stormy, rainy atmosphere, but at the same time I was struck by how obvious is always was that the whole thing was a setup. I guess part of it may be because some of the flood scenes were filmed on a part of Universal Studios that you go right through when you take the tram tour, and other parts were clearly filmed in that big water tank with the false background that's right near the Psycho house (at least it was when I last went on that tour, which was regrettably sometime in the early 1990s), but I can't blame the fakeness in its entirety just on the fact that some of the sets are personally familiar to anyone who has been on the tram tour at Universal Studios in Hollywood.
There is an interesting paradox about Hard Rain, in that it is peppered with capable and even great actors (as in the case of Morgan Freeman), but it still comes off as contrived and unreal. Christian Slater is not the most beloved actor in the world, but I have an immutable liking for him, probably just because he was part of the brilliant Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Minnie Driver has delivered some excellent performances in some excellent movies, although none that really struck my interest. Morgan Freeman is undoubtedly one of the greatest actors working today, which is why it's strange that even his enormous presence wasn't able to generate more interest in this movie. And Randy Quaid, while one of my personal favorite comedic actors (mostly due to his absolute hilarity is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation), was badly miscast from the beginning.
What you have in Hard Rain is a flooded town due to excessive rain and an old and weak dam that periodically has to release more and more water to avoid overflowing, each time flooding the town more and more. The movie starts off with the town being evacuated (which is shown in a total of two or three cars led down a flooded street) and a couple of armored car drivers picking up all of the money from the town bank. It's interesting to consider what made director Mikael Salomon feel it necessary to present this routine pickup as a robbery (even going so far as to have the bank manager nervously throwing stacks of money into a bag and saying he's going as fast as he can) and then turn right around and show that it's a perfectly normal event. What you have here in the first few minutes of the movie is a scene that builds false suspense and then cops out, much like the rest of the movie. We're already being set up for disaster, and it has nothing to do with a flood.
(spoilers)
The movie is the presentation of a flooded and therefore deserted town and a subsequent robbery attempt, with all of the logical inconsistencies that that might imply. The struggle between the good guys and the bad guys goes on for way too long, for one thing. It's just too much to ask us to believe that no one is coming to help just because the guy up on the dam is not calling for help and Charlie turned out to be in on it from the beginning. It's like the movie takes place in its own little world, completely cut off from the rest of the world because the story finds that necessary. Sort of like the RoboCop movies, to some extent.
On the other hand, there is an undeniable element of entertainment that comes along with the movie, despite its almost complete lack of any true possession of realism. It's a movie that is fun to watch but becomes bad the more you think about it, and I can tell this mostly because as I write this review, my opinion of the film steadily grows lower and lower. It's really sad that the movie had so many good actors in it but still fell flat. There are, of course, a few stock characters, such as the bad guy's idiot sidekick and the nervous old man and his wife (an interaction between whom comes off as one of the most amusing scenes in the film), and this may be the root of the film's downfall. Even the good actors and the great actor in the film were all playing one-dimensional characters.
Morgan Freeman was the typical aging thief who only wanted to steal enough money to escape all of this nonsense, Randy Quaid delivers a terribly unfitting performance as the frustrated sheriff who goes bad after losing reelection, Christian Slater is the lone hero who tries to save the day, and Minnie Driver is the obligatory love interest. Nothing very exciting here, not even when Jim, Morgan Freeman's character, winds up on Tom's (Christian Slater) side near the end is there enough interest generated in the plot to make up for its routine presentation, the manufactured sets, and the tedious dialogue.
I worked at a video store in Fresno, California when this movie was released, and I remember that it was enormously popular during the first few weeks that it was released, just like Sphere. It was clearly one of the more highly anticipated films of 1998, which was probably why it was so popular when it was released on video, but this also reflects the quality of the film. It is an entertaining film to some extent, but also like Sphere, is goes steadily downhill after a relatively interesting introduction, and the more you think about the movie itself, the less impressive it becomes.
There is an interesting paradox about Hard Rain, in that it is peppered with capable and even great actors (as in the case of Morgan Freeman), but it still comes off as contrived and unreal. Christian Slater is not the most beloved actor in the world, but I have an immutable liking for him, probably just because he was part of the brilliant Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Minnie Driver has delivered some excellent performances in some excellent movies, although none that really struck my interest. Morgan Freeman is undoubtedly one of the greatest actors working today, which is why it's strange that even his enormous presence wasn't able to generate more interest in this movie. And Randy Quaid, while one of my personal favorite comedic actors (mostly due to his absolute hilarity is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation), was badly miscast from the beginning.
What you have in Hard Rain is a flooded town due to excessive rain and an old and weak dam that periodically has to release more and more water to avoid overflowing, each time flooding the town more and more. The movie starts off with the town being evacuated (which is shown in a total of two or three cars led down a flooded street) and a couple of armored car drivers picking up all of the money from the town bank. It's interesting to consider what made director Mikael Salomon feel it necessary to present this routine pickup as a robbery (even going so far as to have the bank manager nervously throwing stacks of money into a bag and saying he's going as fast as he can) and then turn right around and show that it's a perfectly normal event. What you have here in the first few minutes of the movie is a scene that builds false suspense and then cops out, much like the rest of the movie. We're already being set up for disaster, and it has nothing to do with a flood.
(spoilers)
The movie is the presentation of a flooded and therefore deserted town and a subsequent robbery attempt, with all of the logical inconsistencies that that might imply. The struggle between the good guys and the bad guys goes on for way too long, for one thing. It's just too much to ask us to believe that no one is coming to help just because the guy up on the dam is not calling for help and Charlie turned out to be in on it from the beginning. It's like the movie takes place in its own little world, completely cut off from the rest of the world because the story finds that necessary. Sort of like the RoboCop movies, to some extent.
On the other hand, there is an undeniable element of entertainment that comes along with the movie, despite its almost complete lack of any true possession of realism. It's a movie that is fun to watch but becomes bad the more you think about it, and I can tell this mostly because as I write this review, my opinion of the film steadily grows lower and lower. It's really sad that the movie had so many good actors in it but still fell flat. There are, of course, a few stock characters, such as the bad guy's idiot sidekick and the nervous old man and his wife (an interaction between whom comes off as one of the most amusing scenes in the film), and this may be the root of the film's downfall. Even the good actors and the great actor in the film were all playing one-dimensional characters.
Morgan Freeman was the typical aging thief who only wanted to steal enough money to escape all of this nonsense, Randy Quaid delivers a terribly unfitting performance as the frustrated sheriff who goes bad after losing reelection, Christian Slater is the lone hero who tries to save the day, and Minnie Driver is the obligatory love interest. Nothing very exciting here, not even when Jim, Morgan Freeman's character, winds up on Tom's (Christian Slater) side near the end is there enough interest generated in the plot to make up for its routine presentation, the manufactured sets, and the tedious dialogue.
I worked at a video store in Fresno, California when this movie was released, and I remember that it was enormously popular during the first few weeks that it was released, just like Sphere. It was clearly one of the more highly anticipated films of 1998, which was probably why it was so popular when it was released on video, but this also reflects the quality of the film. It is an entertaining film to some extent, but also like Sphere, is goes steadily downhill after a relatively interesting introduction, and the more you think about the movie itself, the less impressive it becomes.