Black Rain
January 2007 Reviewed by: Anthony Di Marco Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Michael Douglas has been a household-word film star for more than two decades. Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, Romancing the Stone and, my favorite, The War of the Roses, are just some films made memorable by this gritty leading man. Throughout his career Douglas has gone the road less traveled by taking roles that would cause other actors to cower and run.

Andy Garcia is less the leading man and more the consummate actor, taking on roles that are less about showmanship and more about subtlety. The actor leads with his eyes and less with his mouth. In Black Rain this ability gives Garcia, playing Charlie Vincent, an edge over Douglas and adds dimension to what is basically a buddy cop film. Next to Brad Pitt’s spiritual death in Se7en, Charlie Vincent’s gruesome demise is very affecting because he wins over the audience with wit and charm. Complementing the cast is fine supporting work by Ken Takakura and Yusaku Matsuda. Gender aside, Kate Capshaw seems a little outmatched.

Thanks to tempered performances and solid direction, Black Rain, the story, has aged well. The film as delivered on DVD could have been better. Black Rain is chock-full of heavy shadows that imbue mood and atmosphere to the narrative. Unfortunately, these beautifully dense and composed images are marred by muddy blacks and compression noise that masked detail and depth. I double-checked my monitor’s calibration to make sure of it. Some of the murkiness may have been due to artistic expression; still I would have liked more dynamic range between white and black.

The soundtrack also lacked dynamics. Good ambient qualities are diminished when sounds lack snap. When the sounds of Foley gunshots and fist blows are blunted, it takes away from the experience. For example, the clash of bamboo in chapter 10 didn’t make me jump. Hans Zimmer’s score, so lauded by the filmmakers, sounded tired and uninspired. Too often I felt I was hearing an earlier version of The Last Samurai, rather than a gritty cop film. Much of this may have to do with the inclusion of Japanese instruments. More likely it owed to Mr. Zimmer’s career of derivative composing.

Limited but high-quality extras turned out to be the high point of this special collector’s edition. A four-part "making of" retrospective struck a nice balance between entertaining anecdotes and filmmaking insight. Douglas, Garcia, Capshaw, producers Sherry Lansing and Stanley R. Jaffe, Ridley Scott, cinematographer Jan De Bont, and editor Tom Rolf deliver interesting angles on their individual experiences in making this movie. Looking back on the experience probably helped keep the politicking under wraps since there was no pressure to hype the film. Ridley Scott’s solo commentary is a fine example of how it should be done. The director puts all airs aside and delivers a very perceptive account of the filmmaking process. It’s too bad Paramount didn’t put the same effort into the DVD transfer. The movie will be released on HD DVD and Blu-ray in January. Perhaps those formats will receive better material to work with.

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