Podcast on Fire Network

Country: Japan/Australia
Genre: Action/Thriller
Cast: Kippei Shiina, Gary Oldman, Kyoko Hasegawa

Rain Fall is your typical American action thriller, only it isn’t. It’s set entirely in Japan and most of the cast are Japanese too. It follows CIA hitman John Rain (Kippei Shiina) trying to protect the daughter of his last target from various shady types.

Sadly this film just didn’t do it for me. The first hour was very well made. You got the scene where someone is followed. You got cops with weird hobbies (notably looking at hotel lobby ceilings). It is your typical action thriller in that aspect. You got the scene where the hero talks about his childhood and reveals his isn’t quite so cold. Plus all those other scenes you expect from this type of film.

Rain Fall gets off to a very good start with enough story, action and suspense to make you want to keep watching. However, it loses it towards the end. For those not in the know this is based on a novel by Barry Eisler and several changes has been made to the charcter so novel purists will most likely be outraged. As I was saying, being based on a novel the film would last for many hours if it used every scene in the book so a lot has to be cut I imagine (if you have read the novel then feel free to correct me if I am wrong). This in my humble opinion explains the sudden degradation of the film towards the end.

The actors all do a superb job, the action scenes are satisfactory, the parts without action kept me interested until the end. This is worth a watch I think but don’t go in with too high hopes and you shouldn’t be too disappointed.
My only other gripes are the phonetic English spoken by most of the Japanese actors makes them hard to understand and Gary Oldman is underused. If you got someone as big as him in your film you should use him more. He was wasted in this I think.

Overall Rain Fall is a satisfying enough experience.