Cinema: Bakelite In Heat

BLACK RAIN

Directed by Ridley Scott

Screenplay by Craig Bolotin and Warren Lewis

This fall the moviegoer has a choice of two Black Rains set in Japan, but they're not hard to tell apart. One is Shohei Imamura's stark meditation on Hiroshima 1945. The other is a cop movie backed by some heavy Hollywood artillery: the producers of Fatal Attraction. Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia are two New York City detectives on the trail of a cool, vicious Japanese gangster (Yusaku Matsuda). Their contact in the Osaka constabulary is a by- the-book gent (Ken Takakura) affronted by Douglas' bullying. You've seen...

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