Synopsis
Two New York cops get involved in a gang war between members of the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia. They arrest one of their killers and are ordered to escort him back to Japan. However, in Japan he manages to escape, and as they try to track him down, they get deeper and deeper into the Japanese Mafia scene and they have to learn that they can only win by playing the game—the Japanese way.
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Cast
- Michael DouglasNick Conklin
- Andy GarcíaCharlie Vincent
- Ken TakakuraMasahiro
- Kate CapshawJoyce
- Yūsaku MatsudaSato
- Shigeru KōyamaOhashi
- John SpencerOliver
- Yuya UchidaNashida
- Guts IshimatsuKatayama
- Tomisaburō WakayamaSugai
Recommendations
- 75
Rolling Stone
It's risky making an action picture that breaks its violent stride to emphasize the difficulties of living up to preconceived ideas of masculinity. But it's that risk that makes Black Rain distinctive. By refusing to beat its Eastern and Western protagonists into comic-book pulp, the movie pays them, and the audience, a rare compliment. - 70
Los Angeles Times
In Black Rain, director Ridley Scott and his team pump in so much pyrotechnic razzle-dazzle that the movie becomes a triumph of matter over mind. It's a blast of pure sensation, shallow but scintillating, like a great rock melody, superbly produced, where the music pumps you up even as the lyrics drag you down. - 60
Empire
No matter how well dressed, the movie can’t escape the gravitational pull of formula. Without a convincing subtext, Black Rain is pretty dull fare indeed. - 60
Washington Post
Black Rain is chock-full of moments, jazzy scenery and snazzy bits of dialogue, and stuffed with steroids. It's big, maybe too big for its shallow notions and commonplace structure. But it is also beautiful and terrible in the same ways that other Scott movies have been eye-filling. With its teeming Asian landscape, its dark kaleidoscopic palette and its heavily layered composition, it's reminiscent of Blade Runner. But this is an atmosphere that needs Sam Spade, not Dirty Harry. - 50
Chicago Sun-Times
The story of Black Rain is thin and prefabricated and doesn't stand up to much scrutiny, so Scott distracts us with overwrought visuals. - 50
The New York Times
At its best, Black Rain has the glitzy quality of an extremely long and clever television commercial. One can't be sure what is being sold, but the eye isn't bored. - 50
TV Guide Magazine
Director Ridley Scott's visual gifts are still evident in Black Rain. But with retread plot and characters, Scott's stylistic flourishes become irritating clutter. - 50
Chicago Reader
Ridley Scott directed this 1989 feature, and while there's a lot of his characteristic atmospherics—smoke, fog, neon, yellow light, rain, and squalor—to fill all the dead spaces, he's still a long way from the splendors of Blade Runner. The script by Craig Bolotin and Warren Lewis doesn't give him or Douglas very much to chew on, apart from a lot of unpleasant xenophobia about Japanese gangsters, and the plot never gets far beyond the formulaic and the forgettable, hammered into place by Hans Zimmer's pounding and numbing score.
