Ah, the disaster movie. Long a staple of films during the 1970's, audiences were delighted (or deluged depending on how you saw it) with crashing planes, massive earthquakes, turned upside down cruise ships, approaching meteors, burning high-rises, attacking killer bees, and our personal favorite: dangerous amusement park rides (1977's "Rollercoaster" in Sensurround no less -- if you're too young to remember that bone shattering bass accompaniment, you're probably better off).
Long after disaster producer Irwin Allen made his last film, disaster movies returned with a vengeance in the last few years. From twisters to volcanoes and the recently included forest fires ("Firestorm"), mother nature has made a comeback. Although moviegoers can easily identify with most of the mass destruction (after growing accustomed to seeing all of it on TV news), not all of the films are successful. For the most part, however, they at least partially work in that they play off our survival instincts that want to keep us away from crashing in airplanes, burning up in fires, or drowning in water (and of course, staying away from dangerous amusement park rides).
Many films have used the near drowning scenes to great success, among them "The Abyss" and the current favorite, "Titanic." So now we have "The Flood." Oops, that was the title this film originally held when it was to be released last spring. The film makers, sensing that disaster movies may have been on their way out, decided to pull it from release. Reportedly retooling some of it, they renamed the picture "Hard Rain." Redirecting the thrust behind the movie into a suspenseful adventure yarn with a flood just so happening to occur in the background, the crew behind the camera hoped to make people think it was anything but an Irwin Allen wannabe.
Unfortunately, it's still a disaster movie not only in the sense that mother nature's at her destructive best/worst once again, but also because that adjective is a good description of this picture. Most of that can be attributed to the flood waters that appear not only to have washed away much of the set, but also any character development, most of the suspense, and a great deal of logic. Hopefully Paramount bought flood insurance before they made this film because they're going to get soaked with this one.
In all honesty, it's not excruciatingly horrible and one can easily sit through it -- as long as you don't try to think about what's happening. Nearly all of the special effects are done quite well and I'm sure most of the cast looked like prunes once the shooting schedule was done. There are a few decent scenes where various cast members are trapped and the water's rising around them that should somewhat thrill audiences. And "Golden Girl" Betty White plays against type and delivers most of the film's much needed comic relief. Inhabiting the persona of a nagging, rifle toting older woman who's set booby traps for potential looters, her constant, irritating behavior eventually leads to the film's funniest moment (a line of dialogue) where her husband has finally had enough of her ranting. Alas, both types of moments are few and far in between, thus leaving the movie to turn into a big gun battle that not only grows repetitive, but exceedingly boring.
The greatest fault of the film (of many from which to chose), is the fact that director Mikael Salomon (a former cinematographer who literally got his feet wet for this type of film while shooting "The Abyss") and writer Graham Yost ("Speed," "Broken Arrow," and an uncredited stint on "Firestorm") left out any character or real story development. With this film what you see is what you get, and that doesn't mean much for these characters. We never know why Tom (Slater) is so loyal to the money (in fact, he complains early on about the job). While his dedication is admirable, it doesn't make any sense considering that both the "good" and bad guys are trying to kill him and, oh yeah, a massive flood is engulfing the town.
Nor do we know much about Morgan Freeman's thief character, or about the sheriff (Quaid) other than he's upset that he wasn't reelected. Without knowing anything about these people, we don't have any personal involvement in their fate or the film's outcome. They're strangers to us, and we watch them much like you would people on the TV news seen in a flood (actually with even less interest). Other than Quaid chewing up some scenery playing the bad guy, none of the performers seem particularly enthralled with playing their characters. Their only mission is to wade through the water and occasionally shoot at each other (and hope for a dry spot somewhere on the set).
Of course I don't know if you'd want to know these characters, for their actions are stupid and/or illogical enough to make characters in a horror slasher film look like Rhodes scholars. First of all, there's a flood quickly rising all about them. Sure, three million dollars is a lot of money, but c'mon. The only thing you'll end up thinking about these people is that they'll get what's coming to them, not just because most of them are criminals, but because they're just plain stupid.
Minnie Driver (who's been such a delight in many other films) plays a woman who will risk her life not to save her grandmother, or the helpless, stranded kitten, but for some stained glass windows she's restoring. Morgan Freeman (who's nearly wasted in this role) has surrounded himself with a bunch of morons and buffoons who probably couldn't even get the money out of a piggy bank with a hammer, let alone pull off an armored car heist. That's okay in a comedy, but that's not the genre this film's aiming for -- at least not intentionally.
It just goes on and on. Slater's character Tom, upon seeing the bad guys approaching in boats, decides not to remain hiding in a cemetery, but instead opts to wade through waist deep water -- out in the open -- and heads toward a light pole where he'll obviously be seen. He does that, of course, so that the bad guys can chase him into and through a flooded high school on jet skis. While I have to admit that's something you don't see every day in the movies, it unfortunately leads to a Schwarzenegger-type line of dialogue. After a bad guy crashes his jet ski and slams into a wall, Slater says, "Low tide, sailor." Fortunately, those one-liners begin and end with that howler.
Although the film's premise seems interesting, the execution is flat. Focusing more attention on how the flood looks then on the characters or a good story, the film makers have created a boring film that could have -- and should have -- been much better. With the truly suspenseful scenes being quite rare, even the predictable breaking of the dam and the resulting tidal wave of water that hits the town is less than thrilling. Now if they'd only thought about changing the story to include a flood rising up and around an amusement park filled with dangerous rides -- and if they would have presented it in Sensurround -- then that would have been a completely different matter. Oh well. As it stands, we give "Hard Rain" a 3 out of 10.
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