In short: Hard Rain (1998)

A violent storm is raging over a US small town. The nearby levee is bound to break rather sooner than later, and most of the people have already been evacuated apart from local sheriff – soon to be a civilian because the populace has voted him out - Mike Collins (Randy Quaid) and his two men, a couple of elderly holdouts (Betty White and Richard Dysart), and Karen (Minnie Driver) who tries to save some church windows.

Close by, an armoured truck transporting three million dollars is halted by four amateur robbers lead by Jim (Morgan Freeman). Despite anyone getting killed certainly not being part of the plan, the youngest, dumbest, member of the robbers shoots one of the security guards (oh, no, it was Edward Asner!). The other guard, Tom (Christian Slater), manages to escape with the money and hides it in the graveyard of the flooding town. A cat and mouse game between him and the robbers ensues, but the locals are going to get involved soon enough. Turns out a sheriff who got the boot might very well be willing to murder a few strangers when it comes to a million dollar prize, so Tom and Jim – as the least murderous people on screen – will eventually find themselves on the same side.

I know, Mikael Salomon’s Hard Rain is not a terribly well loved film, but I do think it is a pretty great film that uses elements of 90s US action cinema, neo noir and disaster movie rather well. The script by Graham Yost is the sort of simple looking thing that can’t be all that simple to realize, creating characters out of a handful of pithy lines and situations, trusting in an audience to understand motivations and the implications of the characters’ actions and then letting these people loose on the simple but not stupid plot. Adding to this particular joy of a straightforward genre tale told with craftsmanship and intelligence is how many different set-pieces the film manages to create from a single flooded town without repeating itself.

Unlike most US action films of this era, Hard Rain doesn’t have much of an air of excess surrounding it, preferring to base the action on characters instead of explosions. This doesn’t mean the action isn’t larger than life and a bit improbable – it’s just the kind of largeness and improbability that feels grounded in something human, in this case humanity as presented by a bunch of fine actors doing fine work despite being soaked to the bone in every single shot.


Even though a lot of what Salomon does here visually is pretty much to the standards of professional filmmaking in 1998, he uses these standard set-ups to create a mood of…well, wetness, bringing the drowning town to life as exactly the sort of place where the natures of people like the Sheriff, Jim and Tom (I’m not mentioning Driver’s Karen much because she just doesn’t get much to do beyond turning on the Driver charm on command, except for a pretty badass moment where she saves Tom from drowning) will be revealed.

In short: Big Driver (2014)

Tess Thorne (Maria Bello) is a mid-list writer of cozy mysteries about a crime-solving knitting circle. When she takes a shortcut through a lonely. wooded area after a public appearance, she drives right into the trap of a big truck-driving man (Will Harris) who first repeatedly rapes her and then drops her off in a drainage pipe next to the corpse of one of his earlier victims to die.

Somehow, Tessa manages to survive and to escape but instead of going to the police, she decides to take care of her tormentor herself. Tessa, you see, hasn’t been in the firmest state of mental health even before her ordeal, writing what the voices in her head (who seem to have horrible taste in prose) tell her to, with some visual hallucinations added to the mix. Now, she’s counselled by Doreen (Olympia Dukakis) – one of her imaginary knitting circle members – and the voice of her GPS, Tom, and she’s out for vengeance.

Turns out the Lifestyle Channel, home of many a TV movie I’m not very interested in (which is based on my specific tastes, not necessarily on the movies’ quality), or at least Big Driver’s director Mikael Salomon, does know quite perfectly how to make not just a neat little rape revenge movie but one that is actually individual enough to be interesting. It is based on a Stephen King story, and you can clearly see some of King’s typical concerns on screen: the life of the writer, the troubles with imagination, the problematic family relations between the film’s bad guys, and an idea of mental illness that might not be particularly polite but grasps the absurdity that is part and parcel of any psychological disorder excellently.

The film doesn’t really have the space to explore these elements very deeply but at the very least, they are there to spice up the film’s revenge proceedings, emphasising how Tessa’s acts are the consequences of a combination of what Lester did to her and the baggage she already brought with her, using neither fact to indict or to absolve her. Of course, giving what nasty pieces of shit Tessa’s enemies are, the audience’s sympathies still stay with her. The film’s just suggesting a bit more of the messiness of actual human psychology than is typical of this sub-genre, and it is all the more effective and human for it.

Tessa’s particular reaction to her trauma also gives Maria Bello the opportunity to really let loose with her performance. What she ends up with is a combination of genre short-hand, actual human frailty, and a perfect embodiment of the plain weirdness of mental illness. This approach perhaps does not make Tess a full character in the method acting way but one offering more than a more straightforward realistic portrayal (something I’m sure Bello could have achieved just as well if she had but wanted) could have been.

It is this willingness to be weird and truthful rather than naturalistic that particularly endears Big Driver to me, something that adds personality to what could have easily ended up as being just the lite version of a rape revenge movie.

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