# Hard Rain (1998)

### reviewed by
Jon Popick

PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com

They say that bad things come in threes. For Christian Slater, I guess the three bad things would be:

1. He's the star of Hard Rain 2. He's the Associate Producer of Hard Rain 3. He's in frigging jail for biting someone

You know you're in trouble when Betty White (denture wearer…Rogaine needer) is the big scene-stealer.

Hard Rain is the kind of movie where the bad guys chase the good guy (Slater) around, but can't kill him because he has some special secret. It is also the kind of movie where the good guy finds some hot babe (Driver) while he's running about. It is also about… errrr…oh, who am I kidding…it's not about anything else.

Slater plays Tom, an armored truck guard partnered with his Uncle Charlie (human Chia Pet Ed Asner). They've got $3 million and get stranded during a flash flood in a small town. Then the aforementioned bad guys appear, led by Jim (Freeman). Trouble soon ensues.

The best intentional part of the movie is when Tom is chased by bad guy #3 (Wayne Duvall)…on jet skis…through a middle school.

The best unintentional part of the movie is the inconsistent levels of the floodwaters. At one point, the water nearly reached the traffic lights but the one story sheriff station remained bone dry. And I didn't even hear a sump pump. In fact, most places where the acting was trying to happen had very little water until the actors showed up. Then, it seemed to rise at an astonishing rate of about a foot per second.

There is also a great unintentionally funny scene at the end when Karen (Driver) signifies that killing is, in fact, bad by tossing her gun into the flood water. These scenes were finely crafted by Graham Yost, the creative genius behind the recent Oscar hopeful Firestorm. Mikael Salomon, whose only previous directing credit is the yawner Far and Away, shows that he may be the second greatest helmer of water films (after God…I mean James Cameron). Next up…The Olsen Twins Splash-a-Bath Christmas?

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