Year:  1988
Rating: 5.5

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I can't recall how I reacted to this film when I saw it about 30 years ago, but my guess is that it was more positive. Since then I have grown a little bit more culturally sensitive (though some might disagree!) so when I watched this again all I could think of was - this is why so much of the world thinks Americans are arrogant assholes. The character that Michael Douglas plays goes to Japan to deliver a prisoner and pretty much riles up the country but in the end he gets the job done because he is a tough NYC city cop in a country of wussies. Individualism vs Group Think. I am not exactly sure what director Ridley Scott intended here - was it to make Douglas such a dick that the audience would be aghast at his rude behavior or was he championing American ways. Again a lot has changed in 30 years and you could take both views - but near the end when he walks the killer through the police station to the shock of the desk cops doing nothing it seems that Ridley is saying - ya he is a dick but he is our dick and in the end he got his man while all the Japanese but one were sitting on their thumbs. So much of the film was offensive to me but that is probably a good thing.


Douglas plays Conklin, a NYC veteran cop who is not above a little corruption and his partner is the too smooth but honest Vincent portrayed by Andy Garcia. They catch a Yakuza killer and are ordered to bring him to Japan to hand him over to authorities. The killer almost immediately escapes and rather than going back home for a beer and pretzels Conklin and Vincent feel it is their duty to catch him - obsessively so in Conklin's case. Conklin goes through the entire film pissed off at someone whether Internal Affairs or the bad guys or the hostess (Kate Capshaw) or the Japanese in general or Nips as he calls them or the policeman assigned to them.


That policeman is played by Ken Takakura who back in the 1960's and 1970's was a gigantic Japanese action star in loads of Yakaza or Samurai films and almost always played honorable characters even if on the wrong side of the law. He was like Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson rolled into one. Here he doesn't get to do much except look puzzled at the funny things American cops do. Also on hand as one of the Yakuza heads - Sugai - is another action legend from the 1960's and 70's - Tomisaburô Wakayama - who was Lone Wolf of Lone Wolf and Cub and a zillion other films.


The truly loathsome Yakuza, Sato, that they are after is played to creepy effect by Yûsaku Matsuda who I was sad to find out was actually dying of cancer when the film was made. If I had known before watching, I might very well have been rooting for him against Conklin who really needed a good beating. His two sons are big TV stars now.


The term Black Rain which is mentioned in a strange aside in the film by Tomisaburo regards nuclear fallout after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the black rain that followed. Tomisaburo uses it to explain where dishonorable people like Sato came from. In 1989 there was also a Japanese film released titled Black Rain in English from director Shôhei Imamura that is in fact about the aftermath of Hiroshima. To say some good things about the film - great production values, some good action scenes, well-paced, at times suspenseful and the exterior shots of Osaka were great. If Douglas wasn't such an Ugly American boor, there was a good film in there.