Unlimitedia Sick Product of a Sick System

Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

viewsonfilm.com I never thought Morgan Freeman would do a movie just for a paycheck but I guess even famous rich actors have to pay their bills just like us regular folk. Hard Rain is a robbery movie that takes place in a small town during a massive flood. The plot goes all over the place with unnecessary twists and turns. You really get the feeling that "Rain" just ran out of steam and the writers made up stuff up as it went along. You also really feel sorry for the actors especially Freeman. To make matters worse, Oscar nominee Minnie Driver shows up a little later with a thankless role. Hard Rain was a January release back in 1998. Critics refer to these types of films as "January Junk." This critic just feels that movies like Hard Rain are "wet" behind the ears. Thumbs down.

david-sarkies Sometimes a movie will appear that nobody has heard anything about; there is no hype nor is there any expectations. Even moreso, these movies will be brilliant, as is Hard Rain. I first heard about this movie on an add the day it opened in the cinema and thought "this might be good." I went and saw it and said, "This is brilliant".Hard Rain is an action movie. It could be a disaster movie with a plot, but it is not. The disaster has already happened. A huge torrent of rain has descended upon a town and has flooded it out and everybody has evacuated. The banks need their money moved to dry ground, so an armoured car comes and picks it up. With three million dollars in the back of this car, somebody is going to want it. That is were Jim (Morgan Freeman) and his gang of thieves come into the movie. They plan to steal the money, but the driver Tom (Christian Slater) manages to get away with it and hide it. Thus a chase across a flooded town where the waters are slowly rising begins. But it is not simply just that because the plot begins to twist, but I won't say anything about it.They say that movies which involve lots of water, such as Titanic and Waterworld, cost a lot of money to make. They also say that rain is very expensive. This movie floods out an entire town, to a point where the statue in the town square is completely inundated, and it rains continuously. The only scenes were it is not raining is when people are inside. This movie is definitely big budget, but it is well worth the price of a cinema ticket.Another thing a friend said. Most Hollywood movies you know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are within the first few minutes. Some movies, like Terminator II, you are not meant to know, but you do anyway. One of the major themes with the movie is that people are not who they seem and first impressions are not always the ones you count on. Everybody in this movie has a part of them that we do not expect. It is not an unrealistic change, but rather a change that comes over people when the opportunity appears. Three Million Dollars is a lot of money, and only the most honest person will not part with it.It is also how the relationships between the characters change. Karen (Minnie Driver) first takes Tom to be a looter who broke into her church to steal money, but what she doesn't know is that he is being chased by crooks. Jim is a crook and Tom takes him to be a killer. He believes that it was Jim that killed his uncle and that Jim would kill him to as soon as he found the money. The other characters are interesting as well, with the hotheaded young crook who acts on instinct. Jim expects this heist to go off perfect, but the youth, with is quick thinking and itchy trigger finger, creates a big problem. The Negro is also an interesting character for he quotes bible verses that relate to floods. This is not to say that he is a Christian, but rather that he has a mystical aura about him. Karen has also changed, though not on screen. She left town a girl and returned a woman. She used to be wild at heart, according to the deputy, and has now returned a woman too good for anybody else.

johnnyboyz Hard Rain comes at us like a rigid and thoroughly uneven, although enjoyable in that way things that are less than perfect sometimes are, soft-back pulp novel; a heist story with a twist and its own unique selling point; in this case, the fact that it will rain just as much as throughout the piece it has done the last week leading up to these events, which in turn will lead to rising water levels no doubt destined to prove a problem to those within. The film's catalyst is the robbing of an armoured van, a heist movie idea which, chances are, isn't anything we haven't seen before, and yet we smile at the places the film takes us; enjoy the application of this idea that the water levels are rising at a gross rate and have fun with this hybridisation of the varying disaster movie conventions which rear up with crime movie archetypes.Swedish director Mikael Salomon is having fun, and we're having fun with him; he seems to spend most of the film channelling a kind of mock-Western genre aesthetic to the overall film. Such a thing begins with the opening shot, a heck of an opening shot in truth during which a long tracking shot begins in the sky and floats across the more rural parts of the town before arriving in the centre within which we observe people being evacuated. Flying down to ground level, we note the harmonica music and the boarded up windows belonging to varying businesses in what is a launching of the film's Western tendencies. It is perhaps true to say the film's ambition does not match this opening. The film comes to unfold within a locale very much cut off from the rest of the world; under the characters' feet, water replaces sand and dirt but a small isolated town eventually succumbs to corruption and two people whom are initially at odds must pool resources to survive. One character, the instigator of the heist played by Morgan Freeman, waltzes throughout the film donning a stetson, whereas the hapless lead, a victim of this van robbery played by Christian Slater, even finds time to bury the treasures numerous parties are gunning for in a graveyard evoking Leone's The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.We begin with the Sheriff of the town directing traffic away from the town; he is Randy Quaid's Mike Collins, and works with a number of deputies. After an establishment of some of his more pleasant; more helping characteristics, the temperature of his presence on screen briefly changes when the town's mayor drives by and off, and Collins briefly reveals a franker nature when he expresses his disdain for the man. Not so far away is Slater's character, a young armoured van guard named Tom standing in a bank lugging large bags of money with an accomplice in a faceless and anonymous fashion. It is revealed they are not robbing, but removing; so as to transport the cash away from the soon to be water-logged town to safety. The initial establishment of these people as folk to be wary of precedes a revealing of their more genuine nature, in that they are upstanding and present on justified terms; something that encapsulates this idea of transition later becoming more prominent and standing in equal measure to that of Collins and his deputies, whose natures began as helping and unassuming before taking a nastier turn.Tom reiterates that there is little adventure in his life, although he would like there to be, while his partner in security points out that when he was Tom's age, he too suffered from a great lack of 'happening' in his life. This alludes to an apparent lack of life experience, and aids in increasing tension as later events play out – events of which we doubt Tom will be able to rise to. Then there is Freeman's character, Jim - an ageing man seemingly too embittered to even raise his voice; a man whom forms a posse with three others, each epitomising varying clichés in that the glasses wearing nerd; the wise-cracking, bible-quoting African American and the hot-headed kid make up his troupé. They plan to hit the truck, the cash being Jim's "retirement fund" in the fleeting few hours he'll probably get to spend it out of dropping dead with hypothermia. When he stands in a sparsely populated bar early on, he deals with a situation involving one of his gang and their exuberance with a crossword puzzle in a newspaper, in what is an instance of the man dealing with a scenario in a calm; creative and intuitional manner which should bode well for certain later exchanges. The bulk of the film consists of surprisingly engrossing chase as well as neatly unfolded allegiances which come to differ throughout; Salomon's film a series of really rather well constructed set pieces involving causality, rescue and evasion which come together and work much more than they have any right to. The director, a man whose work I had not come across in any other capacity prior to first seeing this guilty pleasure several years ago, nor indeed have I experience any since, keeps things chugging along without trying to dress it up as anything it isn't. Hard Rain is a film difficult not to get into, and tough to really dislike.

leplatypus I discovered this movie because there is Minnie Driver in it and i must say that this is a great one! Except "War of worlds" by Spielberg, i don't know a movie with such an apocalyptic setting: Mother Nature is set loose and threatens to flood everything. But instead of focusing with megalopolises (NY, LA) and calling for the President, this realistic movie happens in a little town of Indiana. Thus, it is closes to our every day life and we can better understand the threat.I don't know if it's intentional or not, but there is a Gothic feeling here that enhances everything. It's the night, the town is surrounded by forest, and a lot of action happens on the cemetery and the church. And if it's an action / thriller movie, actually, some shoots reminds me of the best horror movies.Then, i found all the characters very attractive: you either care for them or despise them at once. And, they aren't one-sided characters because along the movie, their polarity changes: good guys become bad, and bad guys become good. Thus, it is very interesting to see that and the cast does have mention because they make that happen. As a fan of Minnie, i found that she has truly something because she is 100% believable in this action / comedy part whereas other actress would have failed.I never heard of the director before but he knows how to deliver great sequences: the opening credits give the mood for the entire movie and you will find all the threats from flooding.In conclusion, this upside down "Abyss" is an excellent tale and if you can find it, dive in it !