ON GENDER SEMIOTICS, GENRE GENTRIFICATION, AND RAW, UNCUT OWNAGE: HAYWIRE

Spoiler alert: when she catches the guy, she fucks his ass up.

Oh, Haywire. Where do we begin? With Gina Carano, the newest inductee into the Hall of Ownage? With Steven Soderbergh ticking off another genre conquered? With the utterly bizarre fact that Bill Paxton might give the best performance (and it's not that everybody else sucks, either, terrifyingly)? So much to discuss in a finite universe. The short version is it fucking rocks and you all should see it because it wasn't shot on film or digital video, it was filmed on pure fucking win.

Soderbergh reunited with the writer of The Limey (and opponent in one of the greatest “angry guy vs. passive aggressive wiseass” fights of all time on the DVD commentary track of same), Lem Dobbs, for Haywire, and the result is exactly the kind of cool, flashback-y, intelligent exercise in pure style that, in one's wildest dreams, one hopes for with a new episode of the Lem & Steve show. This one stars retired MMA fighter Gina Carano, whom we learn is an ex-Marine now kicking ass in the private sector, but before anyone even says a word, it's clear that she can (and will) fuck you up.

In a bizarre way, Haywire is of a piece with Soderbergh's Bubble and The Girlfriend Experience, discounting the obvious differences that it has twenty-five times the budget and features wall-to-wall ownage. All three are looks at different variations of being a woman who'd be doing fine if all the fuckin men would stop acting the fool for five seconds, with a protagonist who is not (yet) a professional actor (Sasha Grey got paid to be in movies, but . . . well, let's just say they were in a different genre). However, Gina Carano has a lot more support around her than Debbie Doebereiner (who didn't need any) and Sasha Grey (who could have used a bit more, though she was still better than most critics gave her credit for), as nearly the entire speaking cast are famous dudes, all of whom are terrific: Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, all guys we're used to being awesome . . . but then the oddity tier with French filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz (who also acts occasionally), Bill Paxton (?), and Channing Tatum (???) . . . all of whom are also really good. Mathieu Kassovitz, that makes sense, he's French, that's how they do, but Bill Paxton and Channing Tatum putting in good performances—as Gina Carano's dad and maybe-in-a-parallel-universe-boyfriend type, respectively—that's just silly. And yet, it's true.

The story starts in media res, opening with Gina Carano, established as awesome in one camera move—say, why doesn't that Peter Andrews fellow work more?—tentatively heading into a diner in upstate New York for a cup of tea. Channing Tatum shows up and she's like “shit” (at this point, not knowing what her backstory was, I entertained the possibility she might be a film critic) and Channing Tatum Channing Tatums his way into the diner and a bit of cool oblique spy movie dialogue ensues until it becomes necessary for Gina Carano to unleash holy hell and beat the living shit out of him. He gets in some good shots before she puts him on his ass, at which point she shanghais civilian Michael Angarano, borrows his car, gets him to field dress her arm, and, for reasons that become clear later, tells him her story to date.

It's a humdinger, full of double-crosses, handsome men, copious ownage, and sweet David Holmes music. The kind of picture it is, we should probably leave the plot alone right here, because there are a few good surprises and things that you see coming a mile away where you're like “is this really this obvious or is there another level” and discovering whether they are or not is fun.

Also, as well-constructed as the plot is—and for a boilerplate “one-[wo]man ownage machine fends for [her]self against evil white guys in suits and attempts to restore [her] good name” plot it is well-constructed—the main attraction in Haywire is the execution, and the casual, almost offhand brilliance of the way it deals with gender. Soderbergh understands the genre on a fundamental level. He knows that if you throw in a bunch of windy, didactic dialogue and try to make your statements about gender and genre that way the audience for ownage pictures—not always the most progressive, sadly—is going to start fidgeting and grumbling what the fuck is this bullshit. No, Soderbergh knows the way. Ownage upfront. Gender commentary in the details through the deft use of signifiers.

This is not to say that Haywire isn't entirely about gender. It is. Gina Carano is the only woman in the picture, and being a Soderbergh joint, on a certain level the picture is about Gina Carano as a martial artist playing the lead in an action movie where she's the only woman who owns the bejesus out of all the men, and what that implies for cinema and gender. (Ed. Note: this is why Steven Soderbergh is the fucking best) When Ewan McGregor asks Gina Carano to pretend to be Michael Fassbender's wife for a job, her indignance on being the “eye candy” almost knocks Ewan McGregor through a wall, and she concludes by cracking “Maybe [Michael Fassbender] can wear the dress.”

Gina Carano is absolutely in charge. Channing Tatum? “Sure, I'll hit that.” Michael Fassbender? “Woooooooowwwwwwww, yeah, he's hot.” But always in a very in-control “sure he's hot but if he pulls anything I'll smash his face off something sharp and break every bone in his body and then if I think he's worth wasting a bullet on I'll light him the fuck up” kind of way. But still, as awesome and fully-versed in the fine arts of ownage as she is, the movie does acknowledge the issues inherent to kicking a larger opponent's ass. Some action pictures have 100 lb women punching pro football players in the face and crushing their skulls, which is cool and everything but nonetheless bullshit because physics. Gina Carano looking like a legit athlete (because she is) and being a women's middleweight—which is the same as a dudes' welterweight—eases the suspension of disbelief of something like Salt, with flyweight Angelina Jolie crushing skulls with her fists, slightly. But still, she has to compensate with technique, and this is where being a real martial artist comes in handy. Her moves employ leverage, getting the angle just right, and precision, and then using muscles. At one point, she out-Onatopps Famke Janssen in Goldeneye, asphyxiating [name of actor redacted] between her thighs, which is legendary for the several obvious reasons (ownage/hawwwwwt/Bond reference), but also because the continuity of the run in her tights that results from fighting with the guy is perfect.

And it's little details like that, and the awesome father-daughter relationship between her and Bill Paxton (who's like, “I love my little girl, but she could kung fu me in half without blinking . . . so proud! *wipes away tear*”) that lets Haywire have its cake and eat it too by simultaneously being exactly like the kind of picture Sly Stallone could have made in about 1986 (or Jean-Claude Van Damme in 1992) and yet something more. Cuz, I mean, sure, it's a gentrified Golan-Globus/Cannon Films picture . . . but fuckin a, man, it's a gentrified Golan-Globus/Cannon Films picture! This is why it's okay that Gina Carano's line readings are a bit monotone and her facial expression doesn't change that much. Dude, Sly Stallone went years at a time without changing his facial expression. Jean-Claude Van Damme his whole fucking career, practically. Action stars don't have to be “good” actors. They have to own.

And this is why Gina Carano is inducted into the Hall of Ownage, on the basis of one lead role only. Even if she does other pictures that suck, she'll always have this. Soderbergh and Dobbs set things up so she doesn't have to do any more acting than she has to, and what little she does have to works within the context of the movie. It also helps that she's got such a great supporting cast, in the truest sense of the term: good actors giving her just the right energy to work with, which is why the idea of a star vehicle starring the least famous person in the movie (another irony Soderbergh no doubt loves) works. It's all set up to make Gina Carano look good, and she does not squander it at all.

(Minor aside here: Michael Douglas is fucking rad as hell in this in the Evil White Guy In A Suit role, that with typical Soderbergh-ian subversiveness may or not be actually evil, but is totally an Evil White Guy In A Suit because Michael Douglas is awesome. In fact, he's playing the James Rebhorn role in this! Rebhorn taught him well. Give me a second to bask in the beauty of the interconnectedness of all things, then let's continue)

I mean, goddamn, Haywire's just about perfect. It's a marvelously tight ownage picture, with a rare compositional clarity and precision of structure that comes from having a really good director in charge. The fact that a director of Steven Soderbergh's stature and talents decided to make an ownage picture is just beautiful, and the fact that he pulled it off so perfectly is no mean feat. May this launch Gina Carano's movie career, and in a different direction than Out of Sight launched Jennifer Lopez, speaking of Steven Soderbergh. But none of that matters. What does is, Haywire is fucking great. Go see it, if you have any interest in things that own.

A SALUTE TO JAMES REBHORN

I love me some character actors. From my very early years as a cineaste, when I realized that the reason the guy Arnold just shot twenty-five times showed up in another movie because none of this was really happening, I liked tracking people's careers from movie to movie and TV show to TV show. It got to the point, after a while, where certain actors' mere appearance were signifiers of the narrative to come. For instance:

Pre-Paul Thomas Anderson Luis Guzman—probably not a very good movie, and Luis is going to die.

John Mahoney—everybody else will have less moral rectitude (because John Mahoney fucking owns).

Art Evans—an unreliable signifier, because the movie might or might not be any good, but Art was guaranteed to fucking rock, even if it's only one scene. Also, any good aesthete has to love a guy whose name is Art.

James Rebhorn—chances are about two in three he's going to the evil white guy in a suit.

Now, this shit is fucking important, because it is the duty of all morally and politically responsible art to remind the audience that evil white guys in suits are conspiring to destroy the Earth at all times. And, the thing about white guys is that there are echelons; in short, white people have their own white people (take the famous observation about the Irish, that they make fine soldiers as long as they have white officers), and right up at the top of the pyramid (the Freemason one with the eye. Trust) are WASPs from the Northeast United States, and James Rebhorn is from Philly. Consider also, he has the perfect build to wear a really, really conservative suit, and once his hair started going gray the fact that he's a fucking great actor meant we had the perfect storm: the Evilest White Guy In a Suit to ever reflect every last goddamn bit of light back from the silver screen.

Trying to go through every single James Rebhorn performance and talk sufficiently about how awesome it is would take about a goddamn year, because for the entire 1990s he probably took about one coffee break off from being in every TV show and movie the 24 hour day allowed him to grace with his presence. He was in so much stuff even civilians will not only go, “oh, yeah, that guy” but follow it up with “That guy was great in [pick one of about ninety things].”

So, given that, a select list of Mr. Rebhorn's finest work:


Basic Instinct (1992)

While the first things one thinks about when one thinks about Basic Instinct are all the sex and violence and casually rancid biphobia, not to mention George Dzundza telling an array of pussy jokes unmatched outside of Shane Black in Predator, James Rebhorn was most definitely in this as well, about two-thirds of the way through.

After Michael Douglas has been walking around making Michael Douglas Face (the technical term for the overlap in the Venn diagram of middle-aged white guy, poorly-controlled sexual impulses, and jaw-dropping amounts of booze and drugs) for almost the whole movie, with the resultant skyrocketing in the price of Jack Daniel's stock and mortal sexual panic of everyone in his path, the San Francisco PD sends him to see a shrink he isn't fucking (casting aspersions at your professional ethics there, Jeanne Tripplehorn), namely James Rebhorn (some other dude is there too, but his presence is negated by Rebhorn's).

Rebhorn only has like one line, and it's some awesome cliché pseudo-Freudian “tell me about your mother” horseshit, but that one line, and the beautifully honed snootiness with which Rebhorn delivers it, leads to one of the most marvelously douchey Michael Douglas monologues ever. And that, my friends, is the mark of a good character actor. Like a midfielder setting up a perfect pass for the glory-boy striker with the nice hair to fire into goal, a good character actor is defined oft-times by how awesome he manages to make the hero look. James Rebhorn's a fucking team player, people.


Real Steel (2011)

This is actually the role that inspired this tribute to the great man and his work. Real Steel kind of sucks—it was directed by the guy responsible the Night At The Museum fuckarounds, so I wasn't expecting Citizen Kane, but it was still really artificial and fucking terribly written—but Rebhorn shows up and delivers an unfuckingbelievably nuanced little performance in his customary tiny amount of screen time.

The deal is, Hugh Jackman is an irresponsible fuckstick who doesn't want custody of the precocious little moppet who's basically the violin bow the movie uses to play the audience's heartstrings, and Rebhorn is the new husband of the relative Jackman's trying to pawn the kid off on. Only problem is, Rebhorn's looking at this rationally: he's rich as hell (his wristwatch has the approximate mass of the Earth's moon) and he wants to go to Tuscany with younger wife Hope Davis (the relative in question) and be fucking like all summer, because to James Rebhorn go the spoils of victory. So he and Huge Jacked Man cook up a bargain wherein Huge gets a big thick envelope of cash and James Rebhorn gets to spend the whole second act off screen fucking Hope Davis' brains out. Everybody wins.

What seems like a nothing role—or worse, an Evil Stepfather—is just brilliantly and subtly worked by Rebhorn to the point where he manages to play A Guy Who Hates Little Kids and not only not seem like an asshole, he doesn't even come off as a bad person. I maintain, you put a lesser actor in this role, you get a stereotypical meanie Evil Stepfather, and the movie's shittier for it. Rebhorn just walks up like, “I'm a reasonable man,” and the audience is like, “You know what? He kind of is.” That shit right there is like the Stella Adler Jedi mind trick, is what that is.


Independence Day (1996)

Maybe Rebhorn's highest-profile role (his role in the profitable but fucking terrible Meet the Parents was less key, ditto Scent Of A Woman, and I can't discuss the final episode of Seinfeld without overturning cars and starting simultaneous riots in at least five major cities), and certainly his most unambiguously villainous. Playing President Bill Pullman's trigger-happy Secretary of Defense, Rebhorn basically spends the whole movie being the guy who's like, “Wir haben das Reich zu schützen, mein Führer,” and Bill Pullman's like “What the fuck is this shit, I thought I was a Democrat.”

Interestingly, in spite of him being a total WASP, and Rebhorn admitting to totally basing the character on Ollie North (showing Rebhorn is totally fucking aware of the Evil White Guys In Suits theory) his name in the movie is Nimzicki, which is about as far from WASPy as shit gets. But, director Roland Emmerich said the character was named after the MGM executive who fucked up the ad campaign for Stargate, so it was just a good, old-fashioned bit of axe-grinding; if not for that surely Rebhorn would have had a WASP name. And anyway, Rebhorn's mere presence is a signifier of WASPy WASP WASPness.

Speaking of setting things up for the other actor, let us not forget the bit near the end when the aliens are about to fuck shit up, and Judd Hirsch busts out the Torah for the prayer circle as Rebhorn's sitting down. “But . . . I'm not Jewish,” says the great man. Hirsch appraises him with one of the great “No fuckin shit bitch” glances in cinema and says, “Nobody's perfect,” a line that wins style points for one-loving Joe E. Brown in Some Like It Hot. Say it again: Rebhorn's in for the team.


The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

Playing yet another super-rich dude, here Rebhorn is Jude Law's dad, who hires Tom “Matt Damon” Ripley to go to Italy be responsible, which ends up being a stupid move, but falling for Tom Ripley's bullshit is nothing to be ashamed of, as anyone who's read much Patricia Highsmith or knows anything about Alain Delon or John Malkovich can tell you.

The thing that's so dope about Rebhorn in this is just how perfectly he captures the quiet, understated, patrician WASP thing here. It's like every white person in the history of white people donated DNA to a super-white person designed by the world's greatest geneticist and polished off by a goddamn artist. Rebhorn is, simply, the whitest rich dude like ever in this. Say what you want about The Talented Mr. Ripley, it didn't half-ass anything. It wanted be a beautifully shot movie with gorgeous Italian locations? Done. It wanted to be about twenty minutes too long with a false climax and too many subplots? It was thirty minutes too long with two false climaxes and way the fuck too many subplots. I do really like the movie, but it values surface over depth. The surface is perfect, though, which is why when it needed a guy to be a rich WASP as Jude Law's dad, it got the rich WASP: James fuckin' Rebhorn.


The Game (1997)

The sine qua non of awesome James Rebhorn performances. David Fincher's typically stylish, much-better-than-it-has-any-fucking-right-to-be third feature gives Rebhorn a bit more room to stretch than most other pictures he's been in, and Rebhorn responds with a fucking powerhouse, multi-layered, meta mindfuck. And, of course, to bring this discussion full circle, he spends the whole movie fucking with Michael Douglas, a noble pursuit.

When Douglas' little brother (Sean Penn) gives him a “game” as his birthday present (pitched as a massively intricate ARG), Douglas, his existence barren, gray, and emotionless, deliberates a bit and goes “what the fuck.” He heads on in to start playing the game, and the dude he talks to at the game company is James Rebhorn. Now, because The Game is one twisty fuckin narrative and a damn fine cinematic experience the first time through (it holds up to multiple viewings, but that's more a how did we get from Tinker to Evers to Chance kinda thing), I'll stop right there in terms of specifics. But suffice to say, James Rebhorn is goddamn astonishing in this. He adopts like five or six different personae depending on what the best way to fuck with Michael Douglas' head is under the circumstances in question, and each time you totally buy it as what's really going on.

Now, sure, there's other stuff going on in The Game. Michael Douglas is a rock (he gets us on his side even though he's a fairly Evil White Guy in this, with many expensive Suits, which you cannot do unless you put in a solid performance), Sean Penn is a bit overcaffeinated but still good, and Deborah Kara Unger was putting in another installment in her brief mid-90s run as the thinking man's kinky Canadian sex symbol, but Rebhorn walks away with this movie. Just walks right the fuck away with it. Every beat and line reading is just like “holy shit, this dude is a fucking BOSS.” And it was the point at which, after having seen him in like a half dozen thing in which he absolutely ruled, I made a point of checking the credits and going “Who the fuck is that guy . . .? Ah, James Rebhorn. Okay, duly noted.” Crossing the Rubicon from “That Guy” to having your own name and everything is a big step. It happens a little earlier for me than most, because I'm a goddamn nerd and I'm obsessed with character actors, but still, when you have your “That Guy” graduation, you've won the character actor game.

James Rebhorn, I salute you and all your contributions to the cinema, not the least of which is the fact that every time I see an evil white guy in a suit in a movie, I have to go, “Is he Rebhorn caliber?” It's not every actor who can lay claim to having defined a character archetype, but James Rebhorn most certainly can. Here's to you, sir.

DON'T CALL US, WE'LL CALL YOU: A LOOK AT CASTING

Note: Some shitheadedness has been redacted from this post that distracted from its actual intent. Be advised and enjoy:

Today's topic of discussion is a thought experiment proposed by Salon's Matt Zoller Seitz outlined in detail here.

The what-if game can be interesting to play sometimes, and casting is certainly a very large element of a picture's success or failure. Here are five of mine:


Fired: Diane Keaton, The Godfather Parts I-III


Recast: Mia Farrow


One Woody Allen girlfriend is as good as another, right? Diane Keaton's performance in The Godfather has annoyed me for a long time, and while a good deal of the blame can probably be assigned to Francis Coppola, who had other things on his mind than Kay in this picture, there's still the problem of Diane Keaton being a little weak at heavy drama. Make no mistake, if you've got a light comedy with a mildly neurotic heroine, you want to cast the shit outta Diane Keaton, get the fuck out of her way, and make sure the camera's pointed in the right direction, because she's about the best there ever was at that kind of role. Kay Adams-Corleone, though? No. The first movie doesn't give her all that much opportunity to fuck up, because all she really has to do is stand around and look confused at Michael. Still, she's a little vacant and tremulous. But the second one . . . I've seen a lot of movies, and with my love for shitty movies, I've seen a lot of shitty acting, but the “It was an abortion, Michael” scene might be the worst acting I've ever seen. That you can't blame on Francis, that's Diane Keaton about twelve miles out of her element as an actor.

Mia Farrow, inversamente, could have played that part in her sleep. The whole point of the role of Kay (as created by Mario Puzo and refined by Puzo and Coppola) is that she's the achievement trophy Michael Corleone unlocks in Assimilation: The Video Game, by beating the “son of an immigrant marries a WASP” mission. Admittedly, not the meatiest part for an actress, as she has no purpose outside of a man's use for her, but there are two prerequisites: a) be hot in a dignified, WASPy way, and b) be able to create the character on your own and make your own choices, because the director, in this case, only cares that you look pretty and hit your mark. Diane Keaton is a solid B+ on the first, but struggled like hell with the second, and of course, in fairness, was playing a part for which her skill set was useless. Mia Farrow, on the other hand, had proven many times over—most notably in Rosemary's Baby—that she was both attractive and able to do good work with a sexist director who didn't care about anything other than her attractiveness (delivery for Roman Polanski's chin, package: these nuts). One gets the feeling, as Kay, she'd have probably said to herself, “Boy, this part sucks, what the fuck am I doing here playing this nothing role as the trophy wife, this is bullshit, I'm gonna quit—oh, wow, look at that paycheck. Eh, suppose I'll soldier on for another week or so” and ended up giving a really subtle, perfectly calibrated performance, and she'd have kicked Francis Coppola in the balls for the “It was an abortion, Michael” line in Part II.


Fired: Jane Fonda, Julia


Recast: Glenda Jackson


First of all, she looks a hell of a lot fucking more like Lilian Hellman than Jane Fonda did. Second, Glenda Jackson could act her ass off, whereas Jane Fonda never could (though ya gotta hand it to her, Jane Fonda works like hell in everything she's ever done, you can see her sweating blood, just a shame it's all for naught due to the complete absence of talent). Third, if you pop Glenda Jackson in a movie where she has to go behind enemy lines and duck the Nazis to find Vanessa Redgrave, the two of them, upon meeting, would form like Voltron to constitute an unbeatable leftist juggernaut that would end any and all forms of fascism forever (and even, through its might, warp space-time to the point where fascism never would have existed in the first place).

Fourth is most important: Glenda Jackson gets no love anymore, which is fucking bullshit because at her peak, she was the best there was. She deserves better than to make the “name all two-time Oscar winners” trivia question a headscratcher because everyone always ends up going “Glenda Jackson won two Oscars? Who the fuck is Glenda Jackson?” A shining beacon of the Left, boy. Currently a member of Parliament for the Labour Party. She turned her back on movie stardom, not to let the other also-rans have a shot at the Awesomest Actress in the World crown, but because she thought she could do more important work in politics than in the arts. Most definitely the cinema's loss, because with Glenda Jackson being as aware and politically astute as she was and is, if you caught her in the right frame of mind with that script, she'd have been like, “You want me to play Lilian Hellman? Sign me up, let's do this. Get me a dialect coach to learn the American accent, which I will of course nail, because I'm Glenda fucking Jackson.”

Seriously, the one problem with Julia is Jane Fonda. Everything else about it is amazing. Swap her out for someone who can act at all and it's an all-time classic, but swap her out for Glenda Jackson and you've got a picture that would never leave my DVD player.


Fired: Denzel Washington, American Gangster


Recast: Chiwetel Ejiofor


Blasphemy, I know, since to speak ill of Denzel is not only a sin but usually puts the “tard” in retarded, but he was wasted in American Gangster. The movie isn't all that good to begin with, as it's way too long and has a few too many moving parts for a story so basic and—by this point—clichéd. The production history was more interesting than the finished movie (directors and co-stars fired, I'm pretty sure Denzel got his $20 mil twice due to a pay-or-play contract, all kinds of other weird crap), which suffered from director Ridley Scott being a little out of his element, and (credited) writer Steve Zaillian having a tin ear for street dialogue. That being the case, this movie was a little beneath Denzel.

This should not be taken as a slight against Chiwetel Ejiofor. The first time I saw him, playing the illegal immigrant/former doctor Okwe in Steven Frears' Dirty Pretty Things, I walked about of the movie theater with tears in my eyes going “Okwe is a fucking superhero.” He's pretty goddamn rad, but to date he's mostly played supporting roles in the bigger-budget stuff he's been in (like American Gangster, where he played Denzel's brother). I say, let Denzel go do something that needs a Denzel performance, and give the English guy a chance to flash a flawless American accent and be so dope that US audiences are willing to put forth the effort to learn how to pronounce his last name. Hey, we did it for Hakeem Olajuwon. And I think, in American Gangster's case, the narrative of “hey, check out how awesome the new guy is” would have helped it financially, as opposed to “hey, here's Denzel doing this shit . . . for some apparent reason.” Even if it didn't totally work, it'd be worth a try.


Fired: Michael Douglas, Traffic


Recast: Harrison Ford


This actually almost happened. When Steven Soderbergh was first putting the picture together, one of the first people he talked to was Michael Douglas, who looked at the script and went “you must be out yo damn mind, no way I'm playing this no-character-development havin' ass motherfucker” (Ed. Note: Michael Douglas' finest achievement as an actor has been hiding the fact that he's secretly black for decades) and Soderbergh was like, “Hmm, let's work on this a bit.”

Lo and behold, Harrison Ford was smoking weed one day and said to his agent, “Get me in one of those indemependement pictures, baby,” and his agent, smiling fondly at his client's eccentric syntax, started looking around for independent and “indiewood” projects. By the late 90s, Harrison Ford had stopped doing good shit like Blade Runner and Witness and started doing boring fucking shit like Air Force One (which sucks) and that romantic comedy with Anne Heche that looked so goddamn bad I wanted to piss on the screen every time the trailer came on. Word came to him, maybe from his weed dealer, about the interesting, increasingly commercial work originating from independent cinema. Big movie stars were taking the occasional part in one of these pictures, either cutting their rate or taking part of it in points, and having critics be like, “Look at [movie star x], with his best performance in decades, he's actually a really good actor.” Harrison Ford, lighting another joint, sighed to himself: it had been decades since anyone had said he was a really good actor. It was thus that he ended up talking to Steven Soderbergh about playing the drug czar in Traffic.

They futzed with the script and gave the character all kinds of new depth and cut all the dumb shit like him lighting up a crack pipe in solidarity with his daughter, and Harrison Ford kept on being like, yeah, this is great, I can't wait to work with a director of Steven Soderbergh's caliber. Still, people couldn't help but notice he hadn't signed anything yet, and there came to be a sense, shared by many of the Traffic peeps, that Harrison Ford might have been playing them while waiting for some more expensive movie-star thing where he wouldn't have to exert as much effort acting took shape. This sense was reinforced when they asked him to cut his rate and he went “Um, no, I'm Harrison Ford, I get $20 mil.” This after they pretty much told him, “sorry man, we don't have a ton o' money,” and he evinced chill down-with-it-ness. Eventually, he quit to go make some piece of shit with Bob Zemeckis and Soderbergh et al managed to get Michael Douglas to say yes (he liked the script changes they'd made with Harrison Ford, but insisted on his full $10 mil since they were going to give Harrison Ford his full rate; shit happens) and the rest is history and Traffic was fuckin awesome.

But still . . . I think Harrison Ford would have been a slight improvement over Michael Douglas. We're talking about the difference between an A- and an A here. If you could get Harrison Ford motivated and ready to show up and put in some work, the character of Wakefield gains a few je ne sais quoi points. He gets that quiet, reserved dignity that Harrison Ford radiates, and it's also all that more shocking that his daughter is a junkie/crackhead. Michael Douglas' one flaw in the movie is nothing he can really help, and the only time you really see it is when he gets in that shoving match with the dealer who's shlonging his daughter, when Michael Douglas Face makes a momentary appearance. I've tried to describe Michael Douglas Face before and failed, but the best I've got right now is that it's an air of “I've done cocaine out of a hooker's ass crack while my dick was simultaneously somewhere highly illegal” that happens when his eyes shift focus and his mouth shakes. The problem with a guy who can do Michael Douglas Face is that it you'd be surprised if his daughter didn't end up turning tricks for smack. And, not only that, it makes it a teensy bit of a stretch that a guy like that could pass confirmation hearings for a Cabinet post. Senator Jackweed McJesus (R-Mississippi) would look at Michael Douglas over his reading glasses and go, “Mr. Douglas . . . the prostitute was how old now?” followed by a frantic discussion with counsel and Michael Douglas nervously replying “All five of them were over 18, Senator.” Ya know what I'm sayin? Harrison Ford, you have none of those problems, the whole Senate would be sucking his dick and asking for autographs. He's just, outwardly, that slightest bit more “electable.” I know it's an appointed post, but Harrison Ford looks and sounds a hell of a lot more like someone who'd be successful in politics. Assuming, of course, he just did a pinner that morning and isn't too baked when he's giving the speech.


Fired: Al Pacino and Cameron Diaz, Any Given Sunday


Recast: Russell Crowe


and Hilary Swank


And finally, because it's Sunday, we close by getting ready for some football. Oliver Stone, jagoff to end all jagoffs, is, nonetheless, capable of making a good picture every ten years or so. Any Given Sunday was a pretty good idea: an attempt to look at the realities of the modern NFL and tackle issues like racism, the commercialization of the game and its effect on players, and how football players get their enormous balls in those tight pants. Stone made a number of inspired casting choices, like real-life football god Lawrence Taylor (who fucking kills it in this movie; when he's sitting in the sauna and says to Jamie Foxx “Nigga you led . . . but did anybody follow?” that shit's some thesping the pros envy) and the bizarre realizations that LL Cool J would make a good running back (he was) and that Jamie Foxx was capable of handing drama (which he also was). But he whiffed badly on two very important roles: the head coach and the new owner.

Al Pacino is Al Pacino, a living god, the one human being who could deliver the line “This city is like a great big pussy just waiting to get fucked” with a straight face, among his other lesser accomplishments (Michael Corleone, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, etc etc ad infinitum). But he ain't no head football coach in the National Football League. This is a head football coach in the National Football League:


Or, since there's only one Rex Ryan, this is an acceptable alternative:


Note the salient characteristics here. A proper head football coach in the National Football League must, at the very least, either be very very large or the type of Southern man who can spend 16 hours a day styling his hair in the morning without anyone ever accusing him of fagmosexuality. Al Pacino fits neither of these templates, nor the last acceptable alternative, the avuncular, zillion-year-old Tom Landry/Joe Gibbs God squad beloved dude whose playbook is ten years out of date but who is nonetheless an institution. Al Pacino would make a terrific high-blood-pressure college basketball coach, one of those little 5'6” dudes who made his college team with hustle, balls, and nonpareil hoops nerdiness and then became an assistant coach before getting the head coaching gig and going on to a couple NCAA titles and a few embarassing recruiting violations. (Ed. Note: someone call Hollywood, that story would fucking rule). But he's too little and not the right kind of badass to own an NFL locker room. He does try, and he has a couple scenes that he acts so well you forget that he's hideously miscast, because he's Al Pacino and a living god.

Cameron Diaz has the opposite problem: physically she's absolutely perfect for the role. Her lanky, rangy physique and tomboyish posture suggest plausibly that she's played sports and done so reasonably well. Cameron Diaz's problem is she's kind of a mediocre actress. She doesn't suck; she was quite good in There's Something About Mary and Being John Malkovich in two radically different roles, but in each case she had a solid script and/or really good director. In Any Given Sunday, she has an underwritten role and a space-case, drugtarded director, so she has no one to tell her that what she's doing sucks, which, as in Diane Keaton's case in The Godfather doesn't mean it's all her fault, but still, you'd want to get someone who, given that kind of apathy-bred autonomy, could come up with something cool.

So what do we do about this two-headed, movie-eating monster? The Al Pacino problem is easy: replace him with Russell Crowe. Russell Crowe may be a difficult cat to work with, and he really shouldn't have thrown that phone at that guy, but he's a goddamn genius actor, on Al Pacino's level talent-wise. More than that, he has the size and the right kind of physical vitality to be a head football coach in the National Football League. Plus, imagine the fucking pregame pep talk Russell could give by busting out some Maximus: “On my signal, unleash hell.” Large men on steroids with trace amounts of blood in their testosterone streams would respond very well to such exhortations. Also, I saw Russell on TV a few years ago talkin about football with the football guys, and he was simply dazzling with that rumbling Antipodean accent, demonstrating a beautifully erudite and insightful grasp on the sport, shocking the shit out of the American TV doodz, who by the end of the thing were eating out of his hand. Charisma, intelligence, balls: head football coach Russell Crowe will win you championships in the National Football League. Believe.

Replacing Cameron Diaz is a little trickier, because it's tempting to just find someone who's a better actress and leave it at that. Problem is, you can't go too girly, otherwise it's like “Okay, why the fuck didn't Barbie just sell the goddamn team.” So I recommend Hilary Swank. The timing doesn't quite work as far as her being someone a casting director would think to hire back then—Any Given Sunday came out the same year as Hilary Swank's breakthrough Boys Don't Cry—but she's the perfect match of really good actor and capable of balancing the “I'm clearly, unambiguously a girl” and “I know just as much about football as you if not more” requirements of the role. Even if she isn't actually a fan, she's the type who would do a bit of research and end up totally plausible.


I gotta hand it to Seitz, this is a fun thing to geek out about. Any other good ones? If you can figure out who to replace Woody Allen with in Hollywood Ending, someone who it's less laughable that he'd be choosing between Debra Messing and Tea Leoni, let me know.

YOU MADE THE RAIN BLACK

Sir Ridley Scott has won wild praise over the course of his 30+ year career, mainly for a handful of the most visually stunning pictures anyone's ever seen. The bulk of the praise—deservedly—goes to Alien, Blade Runner, and to a lesser extent Gladiator (which has far more detractors than the other two, but don't front, in 2000 Gladiator gave your eyes a hard-on too). Sir Ridley has made his share of shitty movies, to be sure, but everything he's ever done looks really cool, and unlike some hit-or-miss directors, his career isn't divided into “awesome” and “crap.” There are tiers to his career. There are straight-up masterpieces like Alien and Blade Runner. There are pictures like Gladiator that fall just a hair short due to minor foibles (in Gladiator's case, overlength, multiple climaxes, and an extremely polarizing Joaquin Phoenix performance, itself related to another foible, brazen fictionalizing of real-life characters). There are a few other substrata, then there are the shit-tastic complete failures like his Christopher Columbus and Robin Hood movies and G.I. Jane.

At the level just beneath Gladiator, in the “very good but with one or two glaring fuckups” category is the 1989 Michael Douglas cop vehicle Black Rain. There is a lot of very important data to unpack in that description, to wit:

“1989”: Unironic mullets, hideous ties, lots and lots of smoking, and a lot of what now comes off as quaint, primitive culture shock.

“Michael Douglas”: There will be bad hair (it's not quite a mullet, but it's close), mediocre but intense acting, and absolutely every other character in the movie will be told to go fuck themselves at least five times. And, of course, there will be Michael Douglas Face, that unique and wonderful facial expression—captured here in elegantly framed medium closeup—that foretells intense anger and an incipient sloppy attempt to kick ass. Fortunately in Black Rain, the occasionally disturbing psycho-sexual (sexual psycho?) component to Michael Douglas Face (see Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, Disclosure) is absent.

“Cop vehicle”: A genre that operated under many hard and fast rules, among which—the hero MUST be divorced, MUST have a drinking problem and at least one other self-destructive habit (in Michael Douglas' case, gambling on himself in outlaw motorcycle races underneath the FDR Drive), he MUST be in trouble with Internal Affairs, and he must be just racist enough that it's not implausible that he get over it by the end of the movie.

Most movies' attitude toward police is stunning when you stop to think about it: the hero is always some wild renegade fuckup, and he's venerated for being under the influence (or at the very least, after effects) of controlled substances at work. Internal Affairs are invariably portrayed as needle-dick killjoy assholes who exist only to keep the “hero” from “doing it his way” to bring the bad guys down. This started, as with the entire cop movie genre, in Dirty Harry, when Four-Eyes tells Clint they have to let the killer go because Clint violated procedure. While you're clearly supposed to sympathize with Clint here, you're also not being told that he's right; procedures are the way they are to protect the innocent, not impede the cops' ability to catch the guilty. Dirty Harry was a 70s movie. The fact that Clint's way was unacceptable to the PD wasn't a sign that the PD was wrong, just an indication of Clint's alienation from it and from civilized society in general. Remember, he throws his badge in the water after he lights up Scorpio at the end. Sequels notwithstanding, Clint's ass was gone off the force at the end of that picture, and he accepted it as reality. That little detail—you know, the fucking climax of the movie—got lost in all the subsequent ripoffs.

All the above being said, and true, Black Rain needn't bear the burden of 80s cop cinema's collective sins. Michael Douglas is not portrayed as a particularly good, or even nice, guy (this is a widely repeated complaint about the movie). Also, he doesn't necessarily get away with everything at the end: even though (I got your fuckin spoiler alert hangin right here) Michael Douglas skates with the Japanese cops at the end, you still get the distinct impression that Internal Affairs will be waiting for him when he gets off the plane in New York, stroking boners and assuring our rule-breaking antihero that there will be no lube.

The final complaint, in re: plotting, is that the story's still a little murky. There's this whole business with this pre-op looking Japanese chick in a sequin dress that lasts most of the movie, but it's never made clear who she is, whose side she's on, and indeed whether or not she committed the murder in the nightclub. This is but a trifle, as eventually it's kind of explained. Sufficiently for this movie, anyway.

Now, on to why Black Rain rules fucking ass: like the rest of Sir Ridley's pictures, Black Rain is stunning visually, and is all the more enjoyable for looking cool for the sake of looking cool. In nearly every single scene, there's steam rising from something or other. There's lots of flashing neon. Dudes bust out swords. Actually . . . fuck, Ridley visually reps his entire career to date in this!

The Duellists—dudes with swords; Michael Douglas has a pissed-off expression on his face the whole picture just like Harvey Keitel.
Alien—Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia are trapped on a long aircraft ride with a monster (Sato).
Blade Runner—steam, neon, Asian people, the odd slow-mo shot for no apparent reason (not employed to as cool effect in Black Rain, alas)
Legend—largely crappy reviews
Someone to Watch Over Me—the first few minutes of Black Rain make Queens look non-shitty. just like in STWOM, proof in itself of Sir Ridley's nonpareil mastery of cinema's visual potential.

Michael Douglas is introduced to the audience, over the first few scenes, as a loner motorcycle enthusiast, adrenaline junkie gambler, divorced dad, friend and partner of slick-dressing sharpster Andy Garcia, and target of an Internal Affairs investigation (and, like he would in Basic Instinct, he has an apartment with a view so awesome that it's no wonder IA's wondering how he's paying the rent). His inability to restrain himself from going off on the IA dudes leads Michael Douglas to join Andy Garcia for a liquid lunch.

Michael Douglas happens to be drinking his lunch at the same restaurant where a bunch of Mafia guys are breaking bread with some Japanese businessmen. Several other Japanese guys enter with machine guns, accompanying a tall, charismatic dude with a nasty growl and a nightmare-inducing stare. This is Sato. He is very bad indeed, and demonstrates this by knifing one of the Japanese guys in the heart, slitting the other's throat, and absconding with a mysterious box the elder Japanese guy had with him.

A shootout and foot chase through the Meatpacking District ensues. Why the Meatpacking District? Because cobblestone streets look cool and there are a lot of manholes for Sir Ridley to shoot steam up through, which also looks cool. Not to mention, when Michael Douglas chases Sato into a meat locker, you can see their breath, and there are all those big swinging pieces of meat. After Andy Garcia comes up with his gun at just the right moment, our heroes bust Sato.

Because at this point in the plot it's necessary to relocate to Japan, the Japanese embassy puts pressure on the State Department, and through the bureaucratic law of fecal gravity, Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia are tasked with bringing Sato back to Japan, where he's done many worse things than knifing a couple dudes in broad daylight. Thinking Sato doesn't speak English, Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia talk freely, revealing their deep bond of friendship, which trumps even Andy Garcia's disapproval of the corruption in which Michael Douglas is ensnared. Sato hears all, and files it away for later.

Sato then turns the table on our protagonists, having some guys from his crew show up at the airport pretending to be cops. Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia, not knowing any better, turn him over. This, naturally, pisses off the real cops, who are about to send their dumb asses back to America before Michael Douglas manages to truculently convince them to stay and aid in the attempt to recapture Sato. The Osaka fuzz assigns Masahiro Masimoto (Takakura Ken), to watchdog them and make sure they behave.

Takakura Ken turns in a massively badass performance as Mas, managing to be a square straight arrow who plays by the rules without being an annoying, sanctimonious dickhead. The way he plays Mas is a constant balancing act: managing to register his horror and disgust at Michael Douglas' boorishness without ever being anything over than crisply polite. Take this exchange, before their formal introduction.

Michael Douglas: Just hope they got a nip in this building who speaks fuckin' English.
Mas (turning to Michael Douglas, introducing himself): Assistant Inspector Matsumoto Masahiro, Osaka Prefecture Police. (pause) And I do speak fuckin' English.

The way he delivers the line is what puts it over. His inflection is flat, with just the slightest bit of edge to the last part. And it proves a point that all cultures built on restraint (like Sir Ridley's native England as well as Japan) have known since the dawn of time: you can own the shit out of somebody much more effectively through cold, crisp politeness than you can by roaring, waving your fucking tentacles, and stuffing virgins into your mouth like an American.

In fairly short order, Michael Douglas starts finding clues that lead him to believe that there's some kind of counterfeiting conspiracy going on and, inevitably, running afoul of the Osaka cops, who consider him—not without reason—to be a borderline subhuman boor. He also encounters a blonde nightclub owner and possible madam, played by Kate Capshaw, perhaps the movie's most massive handicap.

I'm sure she's a lovely person—Steven Spielberg certainly thinks so—but man, every scene she's in in this grinds to a halt. Her line readings are really weird; there's always like a second's pause before she speaks, and her inflections are all stylized like she's trying so hard to be Barbra Stanwyck her head's about to explode. Oddly enough, Sharon Stone—herself no slouch in the shitty acting department—could have played this role in her sleep, even though she was a touch too young when Black Rain came out, and she also wasn't famous at that point because Paul Verhoeven had yet to work his Dutch fetishist's magic on her. There were any number of blondes (her being a blonde is semiotically important, this being Japan after all) who could have played this role and not sucked, but hey, such is life. Sometimes roles get miscast, not the end of the universe.

Especially not with the fairly intriguing plot about Yakuza intrigue and East-West culture clash unfolding. Michael Douglas clashes with Mas over what Mas thinks is Michael Douglas living down to his rep and stealing some money from a crime scene, only what Michael Douglas is actually doing is proving that it's counterfeit by the way it burns. He gets off the hook by demonstrating to Mas' boss Ohashi (who's awesome in this, and who led me one time when very drunk to willfully misspell his name as O'Hashi and make a tortured joke about the omnipresence of Irish police, even in the East; I guess you had to have been there).

Andy Garcia tries to reconcile with Mas, who was, after all, acting in good faith and on prior knowledge of Michael Douglas' corruption troubles. Michael Douglas is having none of this, so while Andy Garcia and Mas get shitfaced and hop up on stage to sing a Ray Charles song, Michael Douglas has a talk with Kate Capshaw about Sato's war with a Yakuza Godfather named Sugai.

Walking home drunk, Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia encounter a lone motorcyclist (motorcycles keep popping up all over this picture as a signifier of lawlessness, making Michael Douglas' ultimate takedown of Sato after a motorcycle chase an affirmation of the belief that in order to catch the criminal, a cop must be part criminal himself—see Thomas Harris' Red Dragon). Andy Garcia holds up his overcoat for the motorcyclist to try to catch (as he does in his first scene with Michael Douglas at the beginning of the movie, where he snatches it away at the last second). Because he's so drunk he was just singing Ray Charles songs at a Japanese nightclub, Andy Garcia's reflexes are slow and the guy catches it. Instead of giving it back, he lures Andy Garcia into a trap where Sato ultimately cuts his fucking head off with a wazikashi (another clever bit of symbolism, cutting off Michael Douglas' partner's head with the traditional “companion” sword to the katana).

Michael Douglas is devastated, and expresses this in the acceptable masculine fashion, staring off into middle distance on a rainy night. Somehow, Kate Capshaw randomly knows exactly where he's going to be (remember, this is before cell phones, he couldn't just text her saying meet me at the Bridge of Existential Contemplation), and takes him back to her place. Less implausibly—he is, after all, a cop—Mas finds Michael Douglas there and, under the pretense of it being a tradition, lets Michael Douglas have Andy Garcia's gun so he can go renegade and kick some ass.

Michael Douglas and Mas bond while staking out the ladyboi in the sequined dress. After a tensely filmed pursuit sequence, one of Sato's dudes leads Michael Douglas and Mas to a big intimidating-looking steel mill. (Why a steel mill? Because it looks cool, shut up). There they witness a meeting between Sato and Sugai where Sato lays out his terms for truce: he wants territory of his own, and to be recognized as an equal by the other Yakuza Godfathers. Sugai, in turn, insists that Sato atone for his American-style fuckery, but the summit is interrupted when Michael Douglas accidentally lets his presence be known (fuckin' Americans, can't take the fucktards anywhere) and Sato's dudes fan out for a round of “Let's mindfuck the gaijin,” the most popular game show in Japan.

At this point, we must acknowledge one of the coolest things in Black Rain—the voice casting of the Japanese actors. They all look perfect too, but holy mother of linguistic God these fucking guys sound cool speaking Japanese. They all sound like Tom Waits chainsmoking and reading the Hagakure into a mic with the sound mixer dropping out whatever treble is left. The rises and dips in volume are like music. Even if all they're saying is “Wow Michael Douglas is an asshole” or “Pass the salt,” it sure sounds cool, proving that not knowing what someone's saying is one of the most important elements in finding it interesting.

The hijinks at the steel mill end up pissing Ohashi off to the point where he deports Michael Douglas and suspends Mas. Michael Douglas manages to very cleverly make his way off the plane and—despite not being able to read the Osaka phone book—over to Mas' house, where he tries to convince Mas to storm the castle and kill everybody with him. Mas tries to explain concepts like honor and shame to Michael Douglas, but the movie's way too short for a task that massive, so Michael Douglas goes and tracks down Sugai with almost suicidal brazenness. Showing great character growth, Michael Douglas manages some humility in this scene—even if it is an act to achieve a goal, even thinking to play it that way took some actual humility—and convinces Sugai let him take out Sato, since as an outsider he's got nothing to do with Yakuza politics.

From there, it's down to the requisite action climax, which has several outstanding and wonderfully surprising elements. No, I'm not talking about the painfully predictable Matsumoto ex machina moment where Mas shows up and kills the guy right when he's about to kill Michael Douglas and quotes back a retarded, vague Michael Douglas line from earlier. I'm talking primarily about these two guys:

Al Leong

Back in the late 80s, if you wanted to be a cool movie, it was absolutely mandatory that you have Al Leong. Behold this partial CV: Big Trouble in Little China, Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, They Live, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Death Warrant, Rapid Fire. In every single one of those fine, fine motion pictures except one, Al Leong showed up, was a badass of gargantuan proportions, flashed that magnificent facial hair and those terrific martial arts skills, and then he got his motherfuckin ass killed by the good guy. The only thing I've ever seen Al Leong in where he doesn't get his motherfuckin ass killed by the good guy is Bill & Ted, and that's because people don't get killed in Bill & Ted. Al was probably really out of sorts on that set: “Hey, when do I get killed?” “You don't get killed in this picture.” “Wait, what? There are movies where I don't get killed? [Ed. Note: Al even, stunningly, played the good guy in a little-seen 1989 movie called Cage.] Fuck, call my agent, there's been a mistake.”

But there's more than just Al Leong. Oh yes. Behold:

Professor Toru Tanaka

The Professor was one of a very select few—maybe the only non-extra—to ever be killed by both Chuck Norris and Arnold. While the Professor's cinematic career was less consistently glorious than Al Leong's (there was surprisingly little overlap between their careers, considering that it seemed like they were both in every action movie in the 80s; their only collaborations other than Black Rain were episodes of The A-Team and The Fall Guy, two big favorites of my youth, as well as fucktard scripture The Last Action Hero, and the hideously stupid and boring Jeff Speakman vehicle The Perfect Weapon) you always knew that even if the movie sucked, the Professor's scene(s) could be relied on for a soupcon of awesomeness. Getting his start as a wrestling “heel” (read: bad guy), the Professor went on to be the big guy in every shitass action movie where the hero gulps and goes “oh fuck I'm gonna have a job beating this guy.” Black Rain didn't see the full realization of the Professor's ass-kicking potential (he saved his best for Arnold and Chuck), but make no mistake: Black Rain fucking has Al Leong and the fucking Professor. In the same movie. That's a fistful of style points right there.


As is often the case in the collective Leong/Tanaka oeuvre, they are both killed quickly and messily, and the focus remains on Michael Douglas pursuing Sato, who has, without his creepy stare wavering from Sugai's face for one second, cut off his own pinkie in the infamous Yakuza tradition (I always wondered, if some Yakuza guy starts shit with you, and you see he's short a few fingers, you have to figure he's a total fuckup, right? Not that you'd want to fight even a fuckup Yakuza, but still). Michael Douglas, in the motorcycle chase mentioned earlier, tears ass after Sato through the Japanese countryside.

Because it wasn't enough for the climax to have the subtle signifier of the motorcycle representing the necessity of the cop embracing the outlaw within, the two of them roll around in the mud beating the shit out of each other, making what's usually a metaphor literal. In a sign of personal growth, once Michael Douglas wins, Sato gives him this look like, “Yeah, go ahead motherfucker, impale me on that sharp piece of wood” and Michael Douglas says, “Nuh uh, bitch, me and Mas are going to arrest you.”

The scene when Michael Douglas and Mas perp-walk Sato into Osaka PD headquarters is kind of awesome, because all the Japanese guys in suits' jaws hit the floor to see these two dirty-ass motherfuckers toss the most wanted psycho in the country around like “And what, bitch?” Even Ohashi is like “Hey . . . procedure shmocedure, nice job boys.” And then there's the sentimental ending and that shockingly good Gregg Allman song (don't fuckin look at me, I'm just as surprised as you are).

Ultimately, Black Rain would be just another 80s cop movie, albeit a stylishly filmed one, but for two things. Sure, there's a lot that's cool in this movie: the camerawork, the sound, the murderer's row of awesome character actors (Luis Guzman and John Spencer feature in the NYC bits), all of which outweigh Kate Capshaw's terrible performance and all the cop movie cliches. But the two things that really put Black Rain over the top are Takakura Ken as Mas (who we've already covered), and even more than that, Yusaku Matsuda as Sato. And yes, he's cool enough to have his own action figure.

Sato is, quite simply, number two behind Hans Gruber in the 80s villain pantheon. Yes. He's that fucking good. Matsuda doesn't do a whole lot as Sato, but he doesn't have to. All he has is that oddly terrifying haircut, that slightly shitty posture that makes him look even crazier, and those EYES. There is no ambiguity whatsoever when Sato is pissed at you. His eyes get really big. His lip snarls. Then you're basically fucking dead.

What's scariest about Sato is that he's so insecure. He has a child's need to be the center of attention, and a grown-ass man's ability to kill everything in sight if he doesn't get it. He desperately wants the recognition of the other Yakuza, but is unsure enough that they'll grant it that he just decides to kill all of them. Motherfucker is dangerous, man.

Tragically, Matsuda died of cancer less than two months after Black Rain's release, which would have surely made him an international star. His legacy lives on, as the inspiration for the protagonist in the game Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny, and the model for the protagonist of anime series Cowboy Bebop.

And so there you have it. Black Rain. Look past the Douglas. See the awesome.