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20 out of 35 people found the following comment useful :-
transnational disaster, 31 May 2009
2/10
Author: CountZero313 from Japan

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Kilne is a former detective, 'contaminated' from his investigation of a serial killer with a penchant for sculpture using human flesh. He turns private eye and goes in search of Shitao, the missing son of a Howard Hughes-style millionaire recluse, his journey taking him from The Philippines to the homeless ramshackle dwellings of Hong Kong's underbelly. Reliable reports say Shitao was gunned down and left for dead, but he seems to move ghost-like in the shadows and crevices of the city. And crucifix-like graffiti and barking prophets seems to carry a message connected to Shitao…

Somebody had the idea to take a festival darling of a director, connects him with two of the biggest stars in the East Asian market, throw in a young Hollywood heartthrob to keep the dialogue in English for the all-important US market, all to a soundtrack by Radiohead – how can it lose? By a complete lack of a semi-coherent script, that's how. Rarely does a film fail so completely to display any shred of plot or coherence. There is some waffle about the beauty of human suffering, a bit of scripture misquoted here and there, but it resonates to absolutely nothing. Depressingly, it is a certainty some people will make great claims for this, condescendingly pontificating that if you didn't 'get' it you don't know your religious history, iconography, semiotics, blah blah blah… Nonsense. This film is an insult to the intelligence, pure and simple.

The only multi-dimensional character is Harnett's Kline, and his arc is all in flashback to the guy you start the film with, he never grows during the course of the film. Shitao has an American father (actually, less Howard Hughes and more Charlie of the Angels fame) but hardly speaks English. This is obvious from the few lines of dialogue given to Kimura, who gets to grunt a lot clearly because he can hardly manage basic English. Every line he has punctures the suspension of disbelief.

The saving grace for this film is the acting, with Harnett especially powerful when we see his moment of contamination, and Byung-hun Lee effective in his vulnerable moments, few and far between as his day-job is psychotic gangster. Elias Koteas, one of the most reliable character actors around, is under-used, managing to charm and repel in the manner of Lecter, despite having the most giggle-inducing junk to say as dialogue.

Kimura, unfortunately, lets the side down badly. Apparently Byung-hun Lee prepared and rehearsed his scenes meticulously, while Kimura would turn up and ask "What do I have to do?" The Japanese star looks out of his depth beside the Korean. Far and away the most charismatic member of the boy band that spawned him here in Japan, Kimura has coasted through his acting career, looking like he could put in a shift if asked to rise to the challenge. He came close in Wong Kar Wai's 2046. I Come With the Rain asks him to step up to the plate, and he is found badly wanting. The charisma is all surface pouts; when asked to come up with something more nuanced, he simply doesn't have it. I for one thought he had, and to see him crash and burn like this is extremely unpleasant. I should have been feeling pity for the character, not the actor.

Apart from that, there is little to praise. The direction never gets out of third gear, while the editing looks like a work-in-progress. Continuity seems to have been sinful. Clearly the filmmakers think this film will travel on the elements alone, and spent little to no time developing the script. They may be right; the female fans of the male triumvirate pouting on the posters may just be young and naïve enough to think this is art. If they are wrong, they have the consolation of knowing Antichrist will keep them company this year in the category of misjudged art-house projects with messianic connections.

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7 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
"Rain" - an unfinished, mixed bag., 1 November 2009
4/10
Author: notmynamenemesis from South Korea

Here's my 2 cents, and I rarely log in to IMDb to actually write anything, I usually just read the threads. I saw this film at the Pusan International Film Festival, and while I feel lucky to have seen it debut there, walked away with mixed feelings. "Rain" is a thoroughly unconventional film, which is fine. Unconventional is not for everyone, so that is not where the film falls short. Where it fails is in the lack of cohesiveness and not feeling like a finished product.

To answer one of the thread questions - yes, Shawn Yue's English is absolutely horrible. He just felt very uncomfortable and awkward. The rest of the cast was not bad, it's clear that English is not their first language, but it's bearable. Lee Byung Hun's is very good actually, and he's able to emote and act very well despite his lack of fluency.

Much of the acting is good - it's not excellent, but it is good. The cinematography is effective, and there's a lot of atmosphere as well as camera work that lends itself to the characters well. The POV is always very interesting and begs something of the viewer, whether it's a desire to see what is just off screen, or how the environment connects with the characters, or even how the lines running on screen draw comparisons to both themes occurring and characters state of mind. Particularly, there is something very interesting the vertical nature of HK, and the way it is captured on camera, and the more natural environment where *beep* is residing in a tent... if you watch carefully there's some visual comparisons drawn that show well thought out cinematography.

As for comparisons, there's also a lot of comparing and contrasting of the films main cast, as they deal with very similar questions of morality but deal with it very differently. This is perhaps the most interesting points of the film.

That much being said, I did not actually enjoy the film. It had its well made aspects, and was very intriguing, but never produces enough substance to turn the intriguing thematic material into anything more solid than mere intrigue. You'll walk out wondering - what the hell was all that about anyway? And you'll have ideas, especially about the messianic and religious symbolism the film draws upon, but there's just not enough substance to call it anything but flimsy at best. It's not even on the level of being ambiguous.

The soundtrack may work for some, and I even enjoy Radiohead, but it was overwhelming for me. Yes, it fits the atmosphere, but it was overused, it felt like the soundtrack equivalent of "Speed Racer's" cartoony VFX. It fit, but was just too much.

Finally, there was perhaps a bit too much unnecessary gruesome imagery that could have been more subtly shown or even implied. I'm not against violence in film, but "rain" took it beyond what was necessary, the audience simply did not need to see everything that was shown. I felt like this was enforced by the maggots in *beep* eye, which was not violent, but simply felt like it was put in for the explicit shock factor. Some may disagree with me on this point, fine, but I felt like it was a bit much.

I really wanted to like this film, and feel it could have been a very good movie. I don't think it could be a masterpiece of cinema, but could have been very solid, but in the end "Rain" felt like a film that had it been a bit more thought out, and about 30% more well executed, could have been a truly solid art house thriller, but ultimately falls short of not what we want, but rather what we need in order to actually comprehend the film as a whole.

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15 out of 31 people found the following comment useful :-
Is Shitao a messiah or a reborn Christ? It may be a controversy., 24 June 2009
9/10
Author: zwinger1 from Japan

I understand that an Asian Christ or messianic person could be hardly accepted by any European or American people・・・ On the other hand, I have no doubt that there is the most important point of this movie, "Mr. Tran's intensive disgust against the most gigantic nation; "USA" who had been exploiting not only African and Asian people, but also murdered numerous number of people in the Middle East and the Asian countries by just self-righteous wars for over a hundred years and finally 'those evil deed" ended up with the world financial crisis. Taking into consideration of the awful history of Mr. Tran's home country, his insightful eyes must be in flame of anger and despair against mankind absurdity. Is it extremely ironical, isn't it? In any case, everybody knows that USA's reign of the world market tumbled down by own strategic failure and by outrageously limitless greed.

If Mr. Tran implies for those religious criticisms from the very beginning, this movie has been already succeeded as far as "raising a religious controversy in the dominating nations" is concerned. As to the religious matter, there are only limited number of Christians in Japan because the most of Japanese people are to be believed as Buddists by and large・・・but in Japan, generally speaking, the devotion to any kind of religion is only subtle, therefore they merely recite a sutra only on the special occasion like funeral and/or memorial services. Mr. Kimura as "Shitao", who is also one of the ordinary Japanese with no religious faith, told in an authorized magazine that he dared to avoid scrutiny of the script because he thought it was the best way to perform "Shitao" and "his authentically unreasonable destiny".

Mr. Kimura is one of the most well reputed actors in Japan, and of course, it is true that he has been the most popular heartthob for over 15 years and has another face as a super-duper pop-star. It is generally well known that he is always meticulously prepared for any kind of play and that he never brings the script into the shooting place with every word of the whole script being memorized (in regardless to the length of the lines; even for 20 minutes or longer). However, this "Shitao", even his existence itself is mysterious and there is no explanation either why he must take the miserable destiny or how he acquires the curing power. Shitao just endures endlessly continuing pain throughout the movie. It seems that he takes it just for granted...and the world is permanently unreasonable and mankind is born unfair...

The wrath of Christ is over-identified with Devil's deed and the agony of both has been achieved the cross or crucifix? I wonder if all the mankind is suffering from agony? If so, Shitao is the concrete symbol of agony of dominated people by superpowers? Still I am thinking it over and over...without reaching the conclusion by far. Some people think Shitao just a poor, vulnerable and miserable man but the others think him he is a man of revelation like Jesus...

Anyhow, the most beautiful and amazing scene of resurrection of Shitao's body in the greenery of the Philippines is strikingly impressed and his impeccably pure eyes, notwithstanding crawling maggots on his face, softly heal my unrest together with the falling rain

This is a movie about which everybody wants to discuss with someone afterwards....

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10 out of 31 people found the following comment useful :-
Likes and dislikes divide, 9 June 2009
10/10
Author: mananana2006 from Japan

The dialog is very few, and the scene of the account for by the dialog is expressed by the image if usual. Radiohead's music piles up the atmosphere of the image instead of the dialog. I think that I can't understand painfully for the person who is not accustomed to such a movie because there are considerably a lot of flashbacks of the image of the Kline and Shitao. As for the Kline and Su Dongpo, there are a lot of nakedness in the scene that didn't feel the necessity. I think that the Anh Hung Tran director director uses and expressed its bloody body through this movie to talk about the pain in the mind and the pain of pain in the body. When the religion outlook on the Christianity is strong, and it knows the Bible, it's easy to understand, and individual meaning of few dialogs is made a mind more deeply and this work is seen. However, up to now, I have thought that it's the world that can't be understood in the person who has seen only the entertainment movie. I think that I run for frenzy because Su Dongpo as Hong Kong Mafia that plays Byung-hun Lee is love, there was terrible, and played it well. I think that acting of Takuya Kimura of this movie was very wonderful, and has evolved further. I think that the character that the post of the TV drama in recent years looks like though Takuya Kimura originally has the acting ability is a negative image. I think that the evaluation divides because it is a movie that the spectator receives by the sensibility. However, I like this movie very much.

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