TC wrote:con on the hitcher?? wtf? put rutger hauer on the map for me. of course, that's also the only movie i've seen him in that didn't outright suck, mostly because of him, so.... and angel heart i really dug. expand please. i remember liking black rain too.
Hauer is a lot of fun in The Hitcher, but the movie overall mostly sucks. It's one of those movies that follows the Idiot Rule, under which the plot only works because the main character is a complete idiot. There were so many points along the way where C. Thomas Howell could have taken himself out of the situation and out of danger, and after about the fourth or fifth time he passed up his chance... well that was it for me.
Angel Heart... I dunno, it seemed awfully scattershot and ultimately it didn't leave much of an impression. I liked the leads and the atmosphere but other than that not much else got my attention. It was only a couple weeks ago I watched it and it's already pretty much faded from mind.
Black Rain: I'm surprised this didn't go over better, because it really resembles my kind of superviolent, angry cop movie. But Michael Douglas is completely wrong for the lead, and he's constantly mugging and preening for the camera. Very irritating. Not only that, his character is stupid (e.g., losing a prisoner to the mob RIGHT ON THE PLANE, unable to save his partner in the parking garage, admitting to the Japanese cop he barely knows that yeah, he's on the take, and so on). The writing just sinks the movie; everything's spelled out in big capital letters, with no ambiguities, and it all makes for a fairly tedious experience.
