Hard Rain (1998)

The Worst Film Ever

One of my all time favorites.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Huntingburg, Indiana faces flooding as the dam is forced to open the gates. Sheriff Mike Collins (Randy Quaid) is directing the evacuation even though he lost the election. Tom (Christian Slater) and his uncle Charlie (Edward Asner) are collecting cash in the armored truck but they are stranded in the flood road. Jim (Morgan Freeman) leads a group of thieves looking to rob the the truck. They kill Charlie as Tom escapes with the money. Karen (Minnie Driver) knocks him out thinking he's a looter. The story is contrived. Mikael Salomon is mostly a TV director. Compared to Graham Yost's earlier hit Speed, this has all the action but lacks the fun. Betty White is able to add a couple of laughs. The acting is perfectly fine although they're not doing any heavy lifting. The rainy water action gets a bit mind-numbing with its sameness.

Finally caught this film on cable and thoroughly enjoyed it. A rain drenched town flooded to the gills with Christian Slater as an armored truck guard protecting three million from a band of outlaws. This is a suburban Poseidon Adventure with many superb set pieces that continuously entertains and includes some great moments of suspense. Watching bandits blaze through high school corridors on Jet Skis in pursuit of Slater was a great highlight. In an age before CGI dominated every film it is refreshing to see practical - not animated effects with actual water flooding the roads, homes, alleys and buildings of a small Indiana town. Slater and Minnie Driver have a nice chemistry and Morgan Freeman always strong turns in a top notch performance. Some nice cameo appearance from Betty White and Richard Dysart liven up the action and add a few chuckles along the way. There are few adventure films today that provide the same escapist entertainment as Hard Rain. Put this one in your queue, it's solid entertainment where action and suspense reign hard.

As a movie with water, lots and lots and water, it's actually not that bad. But as a typical action picture, it's got villains that aren't mean enough, and don't seem quite determined enough (to get what they want, that is) for this movie to be something truly exciting. It's nice to see Morgan Freeman playing a bad guy, but he smiles a couple times (and I'm not talking about evil smiles), which is kind of a cheat. Give the characters a little more personality, ratchet the suspense a little, speed up the action, and this could have been a top-notch movie. And aside from comic relief, the two elderly characters (one of them played by Betty White), are unnecessary.*** out of ****

It's an armoured-car heist. And apparently, the villains not only knew when it was going to set off, how much was in it, and which way it was going; they also knew what the weather would be like en-route. Now that's forward planning! The old geezer driving it is apparently the villains' inside man. He drives the truck into a road flood, stalling the engine. Now all the gang have to do is turn-up in a boat and help themselves.Starring Pixie-faced Christian Slater as the honest sidekick; he puts up a fight which results in the old guy being gunned-down. After that, he hides the money and runs. The villains give chase. They need him alive in order to know where he's hidden it. Cue all manner of water sports.The rain is incessant (though not heavy enough to put out a simple church-roof fire). Flooding worsens. The dam breaks. Minnie (donkey jaws) Driver appears as a restorer of stained-glass windows, giving her usual acting-by-numbers turn. The sheriff goes crooked at the thought of $3 million, so enmity and loyalty become ambiguous though offer few additional thrills. Shooting gets almost incessant, mostly to little effect. In the end; it's boring.For me, the biggest problem is that non of the characters move me to care for them. The old guy, who might have excited sympathy, was one of the gang. Slater's and Driver's characters both incline towards the unbelievable. The rest are mostly just cameos of one particular human trait or another. The most heavyweight and potentially likable character is that of Morgan Freeman. But he is the lead baddie. And while he may not have wanted anyone hurt, it nevertheless happens and on his watch. If you don't care about the characters, then you don't care what happens to them, so there's no story to speak of.It's basically a thick slice of robbery ham, to which floods of water do not bring the additional drama its makers had hoped.One-watch hokum, can't recommend it.Incidentally; by 1998, armoured cars in Britain contained 'a locked safe to which the crew had no access', a homing device that was tamper-proof, explosive dye-bags that would render money un-useable, and 'smart-water' contaminants. Apparently the Yanks need to modernise. Mind how you go.