Product Details

• Actors: Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia, Ken Takakura, Kate Capshaw, Yûsaku Matsuda
• Directors: Ridley Scott
• Writers: Craig Bolotin, Warren Lewis
• Producers: Alan Poul, Craig Bolotin, Julie Kirkham, Sherry Lansing, Stanley R. Jaffe
• Format: AC-3, Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, DVD, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), English (Dolby Digital 5.1 EX), French (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Paramount
• DVD Release Date: October 10, 2006
• Run Time: 125 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (87 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000GG4Y3M
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #23,663 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Black Rain (Special Collector's Edition)" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential video

A guilty pleasure if ever there was one, Black Rain is a ridiculously entertaining thriller by Ridley Scott (Alien), starring Michael Douglas as a tough New York cop who--along with his partner (Andy Garcia)--goes to Japan to deliver a local mobster. When the latter escapes, Douglas's brand of gonzo crime fighting rubs his Japanese hosts the wrong way. Slick, mechanistic, and absurd, the film is all surface action and attitude (not to mention Scott's incredibly busy, trademark art direction); and one can get lost in the sheer indulgence of it. However, if you can buy Douglas as an iconoclastic lawman, you can buy anything else here, including the notion of Kate Capshaw as a blonde escort highly desired by Japanese businessmen. --Tom Keogh

Product Description

Director Ridley Scott, who created two of Hollywood's most impactful and stylish adventure thrillers, Alien and Blade Runner, hits the mark again in Black Rain. Academy Award-winner Michael Douglas (Fatal Attraction, Wall Street) and Andy Garcia (Internal Affairs, The Untouchables) play New York cops whose job to escort a vicious assassin back to his native Japan leads the two Americans into Osaka's exotic underworld and straight into the center of a raging, brutal "Yakuza" gangland battle.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A guilt-free pleasure, December 27, 2003

By 

John S. Ryan "Scott Ryan" (Cuyahoga Falls, OH) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Black Rain (DVD)

I'm not sure why this movie is described as a 'guilty pleasure'. I don't feel at all bad about liking it. And I do like it, a lot.

For one thing, I like Michael Douglas. I liked him thirty years ago in _The Streets of San Francisco_, I liked him even better after he turned _One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest_ from a great book and a great stage play into a great motion picture, and I've kept right on liking him every time he's gotten himself cast in a stylish, well-scripted film.

And this _is_ a stylish, well-scripted film. It's every bit as dark as you expect from Ridley Scott, and although there's a fairly well-defined villain, the 'heroes' are morally ambiguous. I like that in a movie.

The reviewers who say Michael Douglas's character Nick Conklin is an 'ugly American' are right, but they seem to have missed the fact that this is part of the point. This film is a fairly ambitious, though not terribly deep, attempt to bring off an East-meets-West theme in what looks superficially like just another buddy-cop movie. The 'black rain' of the title is one of the aftereffects of the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it's the symbolic stand-in for the Western 'decadence' bemoaned by the more traditional Nipponese (even the crime bosses).

But that doesn't mean Japan wins the dramatic argument. On the contrary, the Nipponese cop (played with endearing self-effacement by Ken Takakura) learns a few things from his new cowboy friend 'Nick-san' too. (And the karaoke scene with Takakura and Andy Garcia is priceless.)

Kate Capshaw doesn't really need an excuse to appear in a film, and that's good, because here she doesn't really have one. She's an expatriate American who inexplicably keeps turning up at the center of the action. She gives the film a bit of _Casablanca_-like flavor, but it's more a matter of mood than anything else.

I won't tell you anything about the plot except that it involves the Japanese underworld and that it zips along at a fast clip. Don't look away or you'll miss something.

The whole thing is rendered most atmospherically, with the sort of dark and brooding edge that I like in a film (and at which Ridley Scott excels). In general I'm not the biggest fan of Hans Zimmer's scores, but for the most part he's used pretty effectively here.

This is a first-rate action-adventure thriller, and I don't feel the slightest bit 'guilty' for taking a very great deal of pleasure in it.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Paramount hasn't done justice to BLACK RAIN !, April 18, 2006

By 

ABI ALY "DAVE" (Jakarta,Indonesia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Black Rain (DVD)

I really enjoyed this when I watched it back at the cinema in 1989.Last year I found out that it was available on dvd and made the purchase without prior knowledge of the picture quality.The film still impresses me but I am very much disappointed with the picture quality,which is grainy and has fading color. It's a pity Paramount has overlooked this film.I am looking forward to seeing a SPECIAL COLLECTOR'S EDITION release which includes:an anamorphic widescreen transfer,a Dolby Digital 5.1 EX sound,English subtitle(the current one doesn't even have this standard feature!),audio commentary with Ridley Scott and/or Michael Douglas,interviews,or other featurettes of the film. What do you say PARAMOUNT ?

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant movie - Insulting visual transfer, March 31, 2004

By 

slider (Oceanside, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Black Rain (DVD)

Before I review Black Rain, let me tell you that I agree with some of the previous reviewers that the picture quality of this DVD (its better on VHS) is totally unacceptable. When I first watched it, I had to check my cable connections to make sure they weren't at fault. What a let-down. Mr. Scott should be raising hell over this.

With that said, this is one of my favorite action movies. It portrays Detective Nick Conklin (Michael Douglas) as an outgoing, old-school cop who takes moral short-cuts to get the job done. His partner, a relatively new Detective (Andy Garcia) is along for the ride. They have a run-in with a Japanese mobster (Yakuza) named Sato. After arresting Sato for commiting two murders in a New York restaurant, the Detectives are ordered to escort him back to Japan to face charges there. They manage to let Sato escape as he arrives in Japan. A Japanese Detective (Ken Takarara) is assigned to help out the New York Detectives.

Douglas, Garcia and Takarara are excellenty cast in their respective roles. The screenplay is well written. I must say that the cinematography is really good. Japan, the once-conquered nation, is now an industrial powerhouse. But, like the U.S., it suffers from the ills of corruption and violence. Ridley Scott does a great job of showing the tension between the two cultures. The Japanese, "bound by duty and honor", and the Americans, loud and outspoken, are viewed as somewhat obnoxious by their counterparts. The musical score is incredible. Hans Zimmer really brings this movie to life with an array of Japanese and American-themed music that injects just the right amount of tension for the corresponding scene. Brilliantly done.

This movie is 5-Star material, but the DVD version is a huge disapointment. I would wait to see if a special edition DVD comes out (I can only hope) with the video quality this movie deserves.