Review of I Come with the Rain (2009) by Joseph S — 19 Jan 2010

Maybe I'm just crazy but there was something kinda awesome about this psychedelic Micheal Mann story in Hong Kong, where even Josh Hartnet looks badass, although all he has to do is stand around looking melancholy at HK skyline while Radiohead's soundtrack chews the scenery. Even Urkel would look badass under said conditions. As Anh Hung Tran's big western crossover film "I Come With The Rain"(his first completely in English) he self conciosuly tries to combine everything the west loves most; detectives, serieal killers and messiahs. It's as if he started with these three elements in mind and decided to try to make a movie out of it, whatever the costs.

Hartnet is a burned out Los Angeles ex-cop who quit the force after a particularly psychologically deblitating showdown with a serial killer named Hasford (played by Atom Egoyan favorite Elias Koteas) an artist who killed 24 people turning them into nighmarishly surreal flesh sculptures. He is called by the head of "the worlds largest pharmecutical company" to track down his wayward son who went missing in the Philipines where he had inexplicably started running an orphanage. Hartnett is on the case in the first few minutes but still plagued by nightmares and visions of Hasford whever he goes. The case takes a turn that leads to Hong Kong where most of the film takes place. The wayward son runs afowl of gangsters, that also have an adversarial connection to Hartnett's contact in Hong Kong a freind a fellow police officer.

Though it seems to recall "Manhunter" especially and a slew of other cop dramas, the plot wanders off as soon as you take your eyes from it. Hartnett does not so much crack the case as descend further and further into his own barely functioning kind of madness, still full of thoughts of Hasford in flashbacks that come without warning(making the narrative hard to peice together at times). The son has become a healer of sorts, and diety to the locale homeless who live on the outskirts of the city. Each time he heals someone he spasms and writhes around, as if having literally absorbed their suffering.

"Human sufferring is the marvel of the universe, is there anything more beautiful on earth?" Hasford asks at one point. And indeed suffering seems to be the order of the day. All of the characters, from Hasford who seeks to capture suffering in his "art", to Harnett who suffers because of what he has seen and how it has "contaminated" his worldview, to the gangster who longs to see his girlfreind again and brutally takes his revenge out on everyone to find her, to the girlfreind who suffers herion withdrawl in the "son's" shanty, where he suffers seemingly for the sins of the world.

This was obviosuly made for a western audeince, French raised Vietnamese director Anh Hung Tran admits as much, drawing from the "mythology of film and the west" to create this strange cocktail of spirituality and mystery. Tran erases most of what we would expect as crucial scenes of a detective story, like those of Hartnett doing any real police work, or the villain getting his comeuppance, instead opting for a series of flashbacks moving us in and out of real time and ever deeper into metaphorical waters.

The images in the film are beautiful and disturbing recaling the gritty poetry of his earlier "Cyclo" with horrors worthy of Tarsem's "The Cell" . The soundtrack is by "Radiohead" who I assume need no introduction. One of the best scenes in his earlier "Cyclo" was set to Radiohead's "Creep", and "I Come With The Rain" lets the band have free range, and includes some of their other classics like "Crawling Up The Walls" and "I Wish I Was Bulletproof", but the real musical centerpiece is from Canada's "A Silver Mt. Zion" and "The Truimph Of Our Tired Eyes" (my favorite song by the band...how did Tran know?) which plays multiple times and during one extended sequence when we see a crucial flashback into the sons's dissapearance.

I know some people will say the film is simple idolatry, using identifiable symbols charged with meaning, but meaningless to create a coherent story. I thought so too at first, but by the end I was swept up in the waves of sounds, images, and editing, to an ambigious conclusion where the suffering of one becomes the suffering of all. By the end the fact that there were more similarities than differences between a burn out cop, a serial killer, and perhaps God incarnate on earth felt appropriate. Tran achieves this with little dialogue and lots of cinematic finesse. It's use of music and investigation(of sorts) into over-indentification, good, evil, and gangsters make it a siamese twin of similarly misunderstood upon release strange detective thriller "Manhunter", and I would feel a liar to discount one for the same reasons I enjoy the other.

Between this movie, "Bad Lietenant: Port Of New Orleans" and Takashi Miike's "Detective Story", we have been lucky in the last half of the decade to see an inventive return to the most fromulaic of stories, the cop drama. Even if "I Come With The Rain" is not as immediately coherent, and certainly not as funny as the other two, it makes its spiritual core engaging like the first "Bad Lietenant" or "Love Exposure" without belittling it's audience like "Knowing" or "The Book Of Eli". It's sad that such an accessible and unique work will not find it's way to western audiences sooner, because it would certainly draw a crowd.

"I Come With The Rain" will not be enjoyed by everyone, and I suspect argued about vehemently, but perhaps that agony of waiting, and in-fighting, will be worth it in the end. Enjoy the suffering everybody.