Bakelite In Heat

By RICHARD CORLISS

BLACK RAIN

Directed by Ridley Scott

Screenplay by Craig Bolotin and Warren Lewis

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 Red Heat. "Theft is theft -- there is no gray area," Takakura observes, and Douglas ripostes, "New York is one big gray area."

There are no gray areas in Ridley Scott movies; the director of Blade Runner tosses color and atmosphere into every shot. The man has never photographed a dry sidewalk in his life; the tiles have got to glisten like Bakelite in heat. Neon glyphs snake around each lurid shop sign. An ominous bike boy threads his Suzuki around columns in a Japanese mall-cathedral.

Is this the pinnacle of Scott's luscious style or a parody of it? Maybe it's the spectacle of a director running for cover. Scott's last hit was Alien, a decade ago; these days his brother Tony directs the blockbusters (Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop II). So Black Rain catches a gifted imagist between inspirations, biding his time without quite wasting ours.