Talk:Black Rain (1989 American film)

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BetacommandBot (talk) 05:51, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Criticism of cultural sterotyping

I liked this film a great deal. In particular, I found the 'You made the rain black' scene, in which Sugai describes his motivation for the counterfeiting operation to Nick, especially chilling. And an eye-opener.

But I've encountered a fascinating excoriation of implicit cultural bigotry in the film that I think deserves to be included in the main entry, as a 'Criticism' section, perhaps.

Here's a precis I've extracted so far:

In 'Culture Meets Culture in the Movies', David H. Budd writes scathingly of Black Rain's cultural stereotyping, which he describes as 'engaging yet dangerous in its preposterous central plot' - the notion of American cops outperforming local police through their superior 'go for it' individualism and defiance of authority, contrasted in the film against the local law-enforcement's stodgy and rule-bound methodology.

'…the Americans reserve the right to not only think but act 'American' on foreign soil, as if there were nowhere on earth beyond the reach of their superior methods.'

Matsumoto, the English-speaking police guide assigned to them, is initially disgusted and sceptical of their methods. Over time, however, he is drawn into trying to ape their individualism, but despairingly finds that he is too hidebound by traditional Japanese thinking to make the leap to superior American way: 'I am not like you. For a moment I thought I could be. Nick-san, I belong to a group.'

Woven into the story in interesting juxtaposition to this are several illustrations of the US cops' naïveté and bluster: they hand over their captor to his own men disguised as police and are given a (Japanese language) insurance form in return. In another scene, the gangster oyabun implies that even the underworld has better ethics than those demonstrated by US cop Nick: 'I'm bound by duty and honour. If you had time, I would explain what that means.'

But ultimately Nick's individualism and outlaw courage wins over the staid Japanese methods, and the evil Yakuza boss is recaptured. In the process, Nick makes a convert of Matsumo, who defies his orders and joins Nick's solo ambush - as a bit player.

'In the end American drive, courage and resourcefulness triumph as if an obviously superior system has had another successful field test, and as if representatives of the inferior system have finally caught on.'

I think I've rendered the author's ideas reasonably accurately. And, frankly, I can't argue with them.

Should this go in? --Cdavis999 (talk) 07:17, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I was just about to post that this article needs a "Reception" section mentioning how it was received by critics. David H. Budd's criticism is just one possible review that can be added, combined with more positive views from other critics (if there are any) and we'll have a more complete and well-balanced article. -- œ^™ 07:50, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Article renaming

Black Rain (film) was moved to Black Rain (American film) per discussion here. Since both films were released in 1989, we decided to use common sense and disambiguate the films by nationality instead of by the release year. However, if another film called Black Rain comes out in the future, we would need to have Black Rain (1989 American film) and Black Rain (1989 Japanese film). Erik (talk) 12:33, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Reception

All that is written is "The movie was met with a mostly positive reception." The movie has a 57% fresh rating on RT. Think this needs to be corrected/expanded. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.13.80.114 (talk) 17:53, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree mostly positive is bull shit

Mostly positive is a bs statement i checked the references one was a roger ebert review where he gave it 2 stars thats not a good review. that 50% or an F- if this was a grade in school.