The people who are closest to me, know that I am a huge fan of Ridley Scott. There is no other director that has so deeply touched the very core of my film soul, and continues to do so with every feature he directs. There is, of course, no need to defend his universally recognized masterpieces Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982) and Gladiator (2000), or even one of the lesser celebrated works of genius like 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) and GI Jane (1997). The film that does deserve a lot more love and attention though, is the excellent Crime-Thriller Black Rain (1989).
I first saw this unpretentious and extremely engaging Michael Douglas starrer by accident, after I picked it up to complete my 7 films for 7 days selection at my local rental store. Back then in the early Nineties, I was mostly into watching and re-watching Schwarzenegger and Stallone flicks, but there’s only so many times you can see Rambo III (1988). A couple of years earlier though, my father had introduced me to the wonderful Action-Adventure films Romancing the Stone (1984) and Jewel of the Nile (1985). Clearly inspired by the phenomenal success Harrison Ford was having with his Indiana Jones character, Michael Douglas decided he needed his own franchisable Action hero.
After successfully cutting his teeth as a producer on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Douglas had enough clout in Hollywood to develop his own material and did so with the films about treasure hunter Jack Colton. The franchise was top priority for Douglas during the early Eighties, with both films earning solid reviews and top dollar at the box office. Unfortunately, Colton has yet to find a third MacGuffin to chase – if you are reading this Mike, it is never too late! – and Douglas moved on to other parts.
One of those roles was Nick Conklin, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking New York cop who does not play by the rules and is in trouble with internal affairs because of it. Conklin and his partner Charlie Vincent – played by the incomparable Andy Garcia – stumble upon a yakuza hit by accident while they enjoy a drunch in their favorite restaurant. If you don’t know what a drunch is, look it up and plan one. I guarantee you it will make your life more fun. Conklin and Vincent ultimately catch the yakuza hitman and are promptly tasked with cleaning up their own mess by having to escort the criminal back to Japan. Upon arriving there, the yakuza assassin of course escapes, forcing Conklin and Vincent to give chase with the help of a local cop.
Fun fact – Ken Takakura, the Japanese actor who was cast as the cop, had become famous in Japan for playing yakuza gangsters. Yûsaku Matsuda, who plays the ruthless yakuza member that Conklin and Vincent try to catch, was well known for his detective roles. Only in film will you find this kind of wonderful irony. Sadly though, neither actor is alive today. Matsuda even died shortly after completing the film of bladder cancer. He had lied to the filmmakers about his condition because he didn’t want to miss out on a role that, in his own words, would immortalize him. BR is dedicated to his memory.
In the hands of any other director, the exciting but otherwise relatively straightforward BR script would have become a run-of-the-mill police Thriller. But when you hire Ridley Scott to helm, you are ensured to make even the simpler stories memorable. Just look at the way Scott approaches the sequences shot in Japan – he frames and focuses on little idiosyncrasies that few other directors would notice. At times, the film even looks and feels like a spiritual sequel to Blade Runner because of the similarities between Osaka and what Scott imagined Los Angeles could look like in 2019.
A lot of what I love so much about BR, has to do with the perfectly complementary score by the unparalleled Hans Zimmer. This was Scott’s first collaboration with Zimmer and many, many more would follow. For years, I tried to get my hands on the soundtrack – this was before Amazon and iTunes – but to no avail. And then, on a faithful day a couple of years ago, I was rummaging through a box of used CDs in a thrift shop I had walked into unplanned, and there it was. It was like we were always meant to be together.
I have the soundtrack on my iPod now and listen to it at least once every week. There are few other scores that when I hear them, so completely transport me mentally into reliving the film. Every note of the BR soundtrack sucks me right back into the scene it was written for.
BR is widely seen as Scott’s comeback after a string of commercial flops. His next project would be a bold and completely original story about two women who run from the law after killing a man that viciously assaults one of them. Once again, Scott would be lightyears ahead of his time and this landmark film that we know today as Thelma & Louise (1991), would garner him his first and long overdue Oscar nomination. To this day however, he has yet to win the statue. Another one of the film industry’s horrible injustices.
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Twitter (X): Robin Logjes | The Screen Addict