Hard Rain **** (1998, Morgan Freeman, Christian Slater, Randy Quaid, Minnie Driver, Ed Asner) – Classic Movie Review 315

Director Mikael Salomon’s extremely well done, exciting, first-class 1998 crime thriller Hard Rain boasts a new idea at its heart and a wonderfully convincing production, achieved under the most difficult of circumstances.

A storm hits a small American town in Indiana, its local dam bursts and the place is flooded, completely cutting it off. Armoured-truck drivers Tom and Uncle Charlie (Christian Slater and Edward Asner), making a delivery there, decide to grab hold of the $3million in their van and make off with it, after they find out that Jim (Morgan Freeman) and his gang have the same plan when they ambush them. As boats speed through the flooded town, an edge-of-seat cat-and-mouse game follows between Freeman and Slater.

Freeman and Slater are both excellent, giving credibly understated performances, while Minnie Driver keeps a non- irritating low profile as Karen the young woman who helps Slater’s character Tom, though Randy Quaid overplays his nasty baddie act as Sheriff Mike Collins.

Graham Yost writes the diligent, conscientious screenplay and cinematographer Peter Menzies Jr provides the excellent images. The work of both these men is crucial to the movie’s huge success.

Apart from being a hugely entertaining thriller, the movie is an enormous technical triumph. The cast spent much of the filming in five feet of water in a replica of the town built in a hangar that was two football fields long.

Slater says: ‘I definitely went through a lot of situations being in five million gallons of water all day long and having another 30,000 gallons pouring down on my head. There are so many twists and turns to the story. It’s got these great characters, there’s a lot going on and it’s certainly not just a disaster movie. You’re never quite sure who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy and, just when you think you know what’s going on, something switches round. I think that keeps the audience on the edges of their seats.’

Director Salomon, born in Malmö, Sweden, has been twice Oscar nominated – for the cinematography in The Abyss and the visual effects in Backdraft, both very considerable technical challenges.

Also in the cast are Michael Goorjan, Dann Florek, Ricky Harris, Mark Rolston, Peter Murnik, Wayne Duvall, Richard A Dysart, Betty White, Ray Baker, Lisa Fuhrman, Jay Patterson, Michael Monks, and Mackenzie Bryce.

Edward Asner.

RIP Ed Asner (November 15, 1929 – August 29, 2021).

© Derek Winnert 2013 Classic Movie Review 315

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/