Okay, here's the deal. It's been said throughout the ages that timing is everything. If you're not walking down a particular street at a particular time of day, you don't find the winning lottery ticket as it lands in the street in front of you. If you'd left home five minutes later than usual, you wouldn't be in the accident that's got you spending the day at Earl Scheib, having another coat of Mystic Magenta lathered on the Geo Tracker. If you hadn't looked up at the big fraternity dance precisely when you did, you'd've never met Miss Right, or, at least, Miss Right Now.
Same thing is true for movies. You like the legends? What if Lana Turner hadn't been sitting at the counter of Schwab's Drug Store when she was? The sexy heartthrob of the era could very well have been Myrna Humppe, from right here in Carver Point. Myrna used to tel anyone who'd listen that she was sitting one stool down from Lana at tha Schwab's counter, but she had to go to the ladies' room to put more ointment on the sore on her lip. If she'd waited five minutes that agent would have seen Miss Humppe, and the rest would be history. Lana got famous, and Myrna came back to Carver Point, moved into Miss Peckland's Boarding House downtown, married Johnny Barklemore and spent the rest of her life teaching hygiene at the high school.
Timing has killed movies, and it has saved others. Space Camp was released three days before the Challenger disaster. Not a lot of folks wanted to see a movie about an accident aboard a space shuttle. The China Syndrome was only a nuclear fairy tale until Three Mile Island took a leak a month before the movie's release, and suddenly the phrase "China Syndrome" was on everybody's mind. You can't buy publicity like that. Top Gun was made and released at the heart of the Reagan Era, while the entire country was one big war hawk, daring anybody and everybody to start up trouble with the U.S. of A. The free flow of testosterone was raging in the air.
And, we come to Hard Rain, the new Christian Slater/Morgan Freeman movie out now. This movie tries so hard to be cool, but it drowns itself in implausibilities, silliness, overall weakness. Not to mention that the release timing slaughtered half the substance of the film.
Seems like there's this town that's being evacuated because of rising flood waters. Among the many things that need to happen to secure a town before a looming disaster, this town feels the need to empty the bank vault (don't ask me, I didn't write it. I thought vaults were waterproof.) Jim (Christian Slater) is one of the armored car crew doing just that. And, there's this bad guy named Tom (Morgan Freeman) who's put together this idea to heist the money from the armored car. He and his stunningly boneheaded crew have gotten ahold of a power boat, and they're gonna rob the car.
This simplistic plot is supposed to keep us on the edge of our seats? Definitely, when you mix in a lot of jet-ski attack crews, fancy underwater danger, and the Bruckheimer Rule of Napalm Filmmaking ("When in doubt, blow something up.") And, don't get me wrong. There are some well-crafted action sequences here, lots of technical triumphs, and good stuntwork.
But there's no movie here. Only in MovieWorld would there be this many stupid people gathered in one place. (Okay, maybe at the World Arm Wrestling Championships. But nowhere else.) Slater's character is appalingly dedicated to getting himself into situations where he's about to drown. Director Mikael Salomon has apparantly decided that Minniie Driver has joined the cast of "Baywatch", because all she does throughout the movie is rescue Slater and fall for him. Minnie's one of the more exciting new actresses to come along in a while, and she's doing Pamela Lee duty. Good use of cast, Salomon. Try a blow-up floatie with a duck's head on it next time and let your actresses act. We shall not even discuss Randy Quaid's role as the sheriff dying to get the chance to shoot somebody. His performance almost makes you pray for another godawful Vacation film, so we can forget just how lame this role is for him.
And, finally, we're left to assume that Morgan Freeman had a house payment or two to catch up on, 'cause he's never been more out of place in his life than he is here, waist deep in freezing water, teamed with the Moron Twins to pull off a robbery despite the fact that a wall of water is headed right for them. And, he's supposed to be this New Age violence-free bank robber, who doesn't want to kill anyone, he just wants the money. He looks like he's trying so hard to mintain the dignity he always brings to his films, but he knows deep down inside that this is all one big mistake to suffer through. I really never thought it possible that any director could get a substandard performance out of Freeman. I guess it all depends on how much faith Freeman has in the filmmaker.
But, the biggest villain of all is not the director, nor is it screenwriter Graham Yost, although he comes in a very close second. Ultimately who destroys this movie is Jim Cameron, the director of Titanic. See, Hard Rain is driven by the effects and the action, all of which revolve around flooding and the threat of drowning. But, a mere month ago, Cameron cracked the rule book on water effects. The timing of Titanic's release, however many times it got shoved around, has ruined any chance of a water-effect movie getting off the ground for about two years. Nothing will be able to top Titanic, and everything will suffer by comparison. Hard Rain was originally scheduled to come out some time in late 1997 -- October, I believe. If it had stuck to the schedule, it might have had a chance rung a cash register or two, because the effects, the stunts, the threat would all be magnets for the eyeballs. Now, though, it just looks like a piddlin' drip of everything Titanic accomplished, even though Hard Rain was finished well before Titanic was. The moron who jockeyed around with Hard Rain's release date should be sweeping out the studio commissary by now.
What could've been an interesting twist to the Die Hard formula instead becomes a muddled mess, suffering from a brainfart of a script, useless cast members, and ho-hum boogeymen. More than once, you'll catch yourself wondering why folks don't just call it a day and come back and play later when the rain stops. By the end of the movie, you won't care who gets the money, or what blows up next, or what person's gonna almost drown. You'll only be wondering why you didn't stay at home and watch the Weather Channel.
Save your presidential flash cards for later. Spend 'em on Blues Brothers 2000, or Mighty Joe Young, or Godzilla, or Mulan, or anything besides this swirling wave of Ty-D-Bowl. If you feel the need for a flood, get in line for Titanic again, and see how wet is done correctly.
Copyrighted image courtesy of Paramount Pictures
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under the knife