Asian Film Review: I Come With The Rain

A few years back the famed Vietnamese director Tran Ahn Hung came to Hong Kong to film an international film named 'I Come With The Rain', which features an all star international cast - Lee Byung Hyun,  Taki Kimura,  Josh Hartnett and Shawn Yue.  We actually saw them at Racks a few times on their days off, which was pretty cool.  

Actually Daniel Wu was supposed to play the part that Shawn had,  but Daniel broke his ankle a few weeks before shooting was supposed to start ( long time Daniel blog readers will remember his blogs about this).  It was good that they were able to get Shawn to replace Daniel....

So flash forward a year or two... and the movie nevercame out in Hong Kong... nor was it released in the US as far as I can tell...  I knew it wasn't a good sign.  It did get released in Japan and Korea and a few other places though... and I managed to find a copy on sale while I was in China.  Even though I knew in advance that there must be something wrong with the way it came out, my curiosity to see how it turned out motivated me check it out.  

In my opinion, this movie is not very good...  I just didn't enjoy it.  I didn't enjoy the story, I didn't enjoy the characters, I didn't enjoy the story telling either. 

Josh Hartnett plays a former police detective from the US who is hired by a rich guy to find his missing son.  His search takes him to the Philippines and then eventually to Hong Kong.  Lee Byung-hun plays a Chinese(?) Mafia boss in HK and Shawn Yue plays a police detective who helps Josh Hartnett in his search while also trying to take down Lee's gang.

OK, that sounds like a pretty decent crime movie, right? ( spoiler warning ahead!) - well it could have been a pretty decent crime movie... but they had to go a bit further and turn it to... less than pretty decent. 

Extra baggage to make this movie not good #1:  Josh Hartnett is still troubled by a serial killer case that forced him to resign from the police.  The guy who he caught was some sort of serial killer / installation art creator who likes to make stuff out of people parts...   yuck.  why do I want to watch this?  (at least most of the stuff they show looks really fake).

Second reason:  Lee Byung-hun's character is needlessly brutal for no apparent reason.  I think they want to show the contrast he has in his love for his heroin addicted girlfriend relative to the brutality he shows to everyone else... but its so over the top its laughable: "please stand there and let us put you in this giant zipper bag so I can beat you to death with a hammer..."  give me a break, what kind of crap is this?

Third reason:  it can't just be about cops and robbers...  no, they have to put something super natural in there too just to be 'bigger' than crime drama?!  So just for the heck of it,  let's give Taki Kimura magic powers to heal the sick.  Apparently he's a regular Mother Theresa of the hobo camps of Kowloon Bay! Using his magic powers to heal the drug addicts and sick children who come to his little shanty.    Umm...  OK, maybe I'm jaded, but I just didn't get this at all.

ps - Sean Yue's part was one of the few decent ones in the film, but it was small and ended rather abruptly and mysteriously... making me wonder why it was there at all or what happened to make them change the story to what it is now. (I always assume storylines that don't make sense are because of post-production changes...)

3/10 - Sorry if I'm being brutal, maybe I've been reading too many of Sean Tierney's movie reviews lately! :-P