This is a wet movie. A WAP, if you will. A Wet Ass Production. It’s this distinguishing feature that Hard Rain haters have claimed is distracting and overdone. And while I have to agree that the rain and subsequent flooding effects do outshine Christian Slater’s performance in many ways, it doesn't mean we need to throw the entire movie out with the bath flood water. This week I will attempt to redeem 1996’s Hard Rain with my readers, and maybe with a couple creeps on the internet, too.
Christian Slater is Tom, an armored-truck driver working alongside his partner and uncle, Charlie (Ed Asner). It appears armored trucks have the same slogan as the US Postal Service in this movie, because when the movie opens they’re still picking up bags of money as water rises in a flooding Huntingburg, Indiana. Tom is new to the job and reluctant to accept his fate. Charlie has been at it for years and is looking for a “thank you”. Shortly after making their last pick-up, the two are stranded in roughly four feet of water with no one around to help them. This is because Huntingburg has been evacuated by the recently-voted-out-of-office Sheriff (Randy Quaid) and his goons officers. As Tom and Charlie wait for the National Guard, Morgan Freeman (aka Jim) and his weirdly assembled gang attempt to rob the truck. Uncle Charlie is shot in the kerfuffle, and it’s up to Tom to protect the money.
We’re about 20-minutes in--maybe less--when the robbery occurs and so we also get the ultimate trailer line nice and early. It has been burned into my mind for 25 years: “We just want the money!” Did they play this trailer a lot on TNT or UPN or something? I’d be dying to know why exactly this has stayed with me, but maybe it just comes down to Freeman’s expert delivery. The nice thing about this line is that, “We just want the money!”, is really the entire plot of the film. Thanks for totaling out the sum for us, Morgan!
The issue with Hard Rain that I seem to be able to get over (because of nostalgia or otherwise) and others can’t, is that it straddles two worlds without ever fully committing to one. It’s both a disaster movie and an action movie. It’s fear of nature and fear of our fellow man. It’s drowning and it’s gunfire. But I don’t discredit the movie for this entirely-- this is a case of expectations. If you pop this on thinking you’re getting a Dante’s Peak or a Volcano you’ll be pretty disappointed because there aren’t any cute dogs at risk, or hundreds of extras running for their lives. The cast is small, contained, and involved only with one another. If you put this on looking for Die Hard… well you should just be watching Die Hard, really. But if for whatever reason you’re branching out, you’ll be disappointed by the deaths, of which the majority are mistakes.
But I forgive all that. I forgive it because I really do like the external and philosophical stakes of Hard Rain. I like the containment of a few key characters being trapped in a flooding town. I like the question of loyalty-- both toward your work and other humans. And while I accept the script isn’t perfect, there’s still enough there to dig into for 96 minutes. Every character has a conflict that pits their supposed loyalty to their role against something else like money, survival, safety, and freedom. Jim brings a friend’s dumb ass kid, Kenny, along for the heist even though he’s not the best man for the job. Karen (Minnie Driver) risks her life to preserve a church she has been restoring. Henry (Richard Dysart) stays with his wife Doreen (Betty White) when she chooses to stay behind and protect their house. And (two spoilers!) Sheriff and Charlie betray their loyalties for money.
In fact, the only person who doesn’t have a clear cut loyalty is our leading man, Tom. Which is perhaps another reason this movie isn’t very well liked. (This surprised me by the way. I knew it wasn’t a well-known picture, but the disdain for it out here on the internet actually shook me. I feel like to know Hard Rain is to love it. But what do I know?) In a split moment Tom hides the money from Jim and his gang, convinced that they will kill him once they have their hands on the money. This assumption kicks off the chain of events that happens next but it has nothing to do with his loyalty. He’s not protecting the money for anyone and he’s not protecting Charlie who at this point is already dead. He does it to preserve his own life, and he continues to work toward preserving his life for the majority of the movie.
Tom is our straight man but the way Christian Slater plays him is just-- odd.
Do me a favor and imagine, if you will, someone else playing Tom. Someone like Brendan Fraser. (I have to thank Frank for this because it’s spot on.) Someone like Fraser would bring a levity to Tom. A wink. A cute smile. A flirtation. He’s someone that laughs at his mistakes and charms strangers. Slater has a weird Jack Nicholson meets Freddie Prinze Jr. thing going on that works for movies like Heathers, but in this action/disaster flick he comes off as cold, annoyed, sarcastic. (It’s also worth pointing out he went to prison right after this movie premiered for assaulting his girlfriend and a police officer after a two-day bender.) I totally get his “thing” but I feel it is poorly used in this movie. It’s like the director didn’t work around the casting choice at all.
But I love the clear theme around loyalty and I love that these people are contained in a small town with nowhere to go. The water is constantly rising which serves a fun and stressful marker of time throughout the movie. We start ankle deep and then by the climax the water has risen to the second floor of Karen’s house. It sets visual cues up early, like headstones and crypts in the cemetery and a statue at the center of town. We cut back to these or pass by them occasionally, and each time we do the water has risen higher and higher on the object. They are easy symbols for the passage of time and increase the stress of the moment. The stakes are ever growing and the people left behind must make frequent snap decisions. Some work, some don’t.
This is why I like disaster movies so much overall: it’s hard to fuck up the plot. Since I spend so much of my time watching and analyzing movies I like to be able to color by numbers sometimes. There’s not much to question when there’s just water everywhere.
There are also a couple decent reveals-- Charlie was in on it, the Sheriff will kill for money-- that surprise Tom enough to keep him, and the viewers, interested in staying around to see what else could happen. I watched the trailer for this movie after screening it and I was shocked that they gave away the Sheriff's turn to the darkside in it. No wonder so many people saw this and were disappointed. It’s such a great twist if you’re not expecting it, because not only does Sheriff decide he’ll keep the money (that’s just ok and maybe expected) but he’s going to go on a killing spree to get it. AND he’s going to call in his hunting friend to help do it. My only wish is that there were more of these little twists-- no one is surprised the other officers go along with the Sheriff’s plan-- but wouldn’t it be fun if Karen was? Or Doreen? Now that’s exciting.
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You may be reading this and thinking I’m being awfully negative for a post that was supposed to change some minds, but there is some method to this madness and it's this: I know this movie isn’t classically great! I’m well aware of its shortcomings. I think the majority of people who have reviewed this movie have been far too critical. The flooding effects and miniature sets are pretty cool, the stakes are clear and easy to follow, and Morgan Freeman, despite also disliking this movie, makes a pretty great villain. It’s fun to watch people race Ski-Doos instead of cars, and to shrink down a story to a small cast, in a small town, in a short time frame. Disaster movies are otherwise always so big and doing a lot. Doing the most actually. Hard Rain does a little less, sure, but I still find it worthy of your movie watching attention.
Sources:
http://www.vfxhq.com/1998/hardrain.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Rain_(film)
https://outlawvern.com/2021/04/14/hard-rain/
https://bombreport.com/yearly-breakdowns/1998-2/hard-rain/
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/hard-rain-1998
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120696/trivia/?ref_=tt_trv_trv
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/e5cjst/rare_trailer_the_flood_retitled_to_hard_rain_with/
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xJzr52
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Slater
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