YMMV / Black Rain

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Exactly how sympathetic you find Nick might change depending on how you choose to interpret his actions and motivations. Do you see him primarily as a Dirty Cop, or as a mostly good guy who has made mistakes?
  • Is Sugai legitimately a Noble Demon who despises the violence Sato is bringing to the criminal world, or is he a Hypocrite that is simply trying to prevent another mob boss from muscling him out? Sato remarks that Sugai didn't protest his methods until Sato left Sugai's gang, and the fact that he's willing to kill Sato in such an underhanded way implies that he's willing to bend his self-professed code.
• Awesome Music: This is one of Hans Zimmer's first soundtracks and it's a perfect example of Eighties electronic with motifs both suspenseful and action-packed that have re-appeared even on films like The Dark Knight Trilogy. It just cannot be described with better terms. There's also Gregg Allman's "I'll Be Holding On", which does an awesome work book-ending the opening and closing credits and has an amazing instrumental remix as the epilogue's motif.
• Complete Monster: Yakuza boss Sato Koji is the upstart rival of old-school Oyabun Sugai. Known for the immense trail of bodies he leaves behind him, Sato brutally kills two men in America with intent to slaughter enough to disrupt Sugai's counterfeiting scheme. Arranging his freedom in Japan, Sato later tortures and kills the partner of hero Nick Conklin, intending on massacring all the Oyabuns, Sugai, and their people so he can claim dominance of the underworld.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Pretty much, Nick's decisition to spare Sato's life in their final battle and deliver him to the Japanese authorities, and Sugai's advice to Sato that be patient because he is young and "will have a long life", became this because Yusaku Matsuda was dying of cancer while playing Sato and he passed away only weeks after the film debut.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Charlie is accused by Internal Affairs of stealing drug money. Andy García would later play an Internal Affairs cop in Internal Affairs.
• Magnificent Bastard: Sugai Kunio is an old-school Oyabun and a boss who believes in honor and dignity. Running an international counterfeiting scheme, Sugai views his crimes as a way of repaying America for the bombing of Hiroshima, which he witnessed as a child, and the aftermath of American dominance in Japan. With hero Nick Conklin, Sugai forms a scheme to lure the upstart killer Sato Koji into a trap while successfully reclaiming his counterfeiting plates and keeping his reputation clean.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Some Western critics accused the film of being racist regarding its portrayal of Japan. Japanese critics and audiences loved the film.
• Moral Event Horizon: Sato's murder of Charlie.
• Spiritual Licensee: SNK's Burning Fight was inspired of this movie and of Showdown in Little Tokyo.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Many viewers found that Sugai was a more interesting and complex character, a Noble Demon with a legitimate Freudian Excuse to hate Americans (he was a Hiroshima boy who saw the Atomic bomb drop in his city), and he should have been the Big Bad of the movie instead of Sato, who in comparation almost looks as a generic Card-Carrying Villain.

---