Word: cop
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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 this picture before; last year it was called...
...nice idea, but it was done in the 1930s by a strip called "Krazy Kat." In "Krazy Kat" a mouse repeatedly throws a brick at a cat, who constantly forgives the mouse for his attacks, Krazy Kat loves the mouse, but a dog cop loves Krazy Kat and arrests the mouse every time he throws a brick. The strip has long been acclaimed for its avant garde landscape and subtle humor. If Breathed is trying to revive the themes of "Krazy Kat," he should stop now before he embarrasses himself...
When did this vast cloud of depression settle over the movies' police force? Possibly when Joseph Wambaugh quit the Los Angeles department and started writing realistic (and highly adaptable) novels about the modern lawman's unhappy lot. In any case, it is now the formula for cop movies: the detective hero is usually divorced, drinking too much and sleeping too little. Often he wonders what it all means -- running around, risking your life and not making any discernible dent in the crime rate...
...actors, Douglas lands somewhere between Stallone (on the lower end of the `tough cop' scale) and Clint Eastwood (on the upper end). Douglas manages to create a surprisingly appealing character despite the poor script...
...movie's title suggests that its makers aspired to more than a good cop movie. The title comes from an exchange between Douglas and Tomisaburo Wakayama, who plays the mobster Sugai. When Douglas criticizes the mafioso's livelihood, Wakayama launches into a monologue on the horror of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings...