Black Rain

Black Rain is not a particularly good movie, however it is a deeply fascinating one. A Canadian, made-for-TV-movie released in 2009, it makes a whole series of story-telling choices that makes it stand out from the late-night, vaguely sci-fi, disaster genre which spawned it.

Dr. Jack Webster (Shawn Roberts) is a doctor of science-stuff (I do not believe they ever say what his doctorate is actually in, just that he is, somehow, famous for his sciencetasticness in every possible field) living in the middle of a forest by himself. As with his doctorate, it is never particularly established why he's hanging out alone in a forest like a crazy person for three years, he just sort of is. Enter three PhD students who decide to camp across the river from him.

After a bit of typical, gruff back and forth, the students and Webster become friends, just in time for a magical acid rain storm to attack them. Some sort of chemical plant explodes, sending huge puffs of chemicals into the sky, which then falls back down as incredibly potent acid in a storm cloud passing through. This all is supposed to be scientific, but the storm at certain points is literally chasing people, not to mention that the script attempts to handwave away the fact that the rain causes cars to explode and people to melt, while plants are completely unaffected. What follows is traditional disaster movie plotting where the characters attempt to stay one step ahead of the disaster.

If this movie seems a quite traditional, low-budget, late-night flick, that's because it is. What makes the movie weirdly compelling is the character of Webster. He's gay, but not for any real textual or meta-textual reasons. The movie contains no metaphors for homosexuality, there is no real gay-centric storyline (i.e. homophbia, coming out), it isn't produced for a gay film company. He's just gay because, seemingly, that's just an interesting character trait.

Coupled with that, Roberts is evidently playing Webster as somewhere on the autism spectrum. Roberts is most well known for playing affable bros who are slaughtered by zombies and psychopaths, a marked difference from his fussy, somewhat severe turn as Webster. All of which results in a rather interesting main character, anchoring a fairly traditional film.

Action is the genre which is most steeped in traditional characterization. The innovation traditionally occurs in the various action sequences, while the characters are normally little more than archetypes which fill specific story-telling conventions. Black Rain might be a silly, mostly forgotten movie, but the fact that it pushes the boundaries of what a leading man can be in this genre should be noted.