#499: I Come With The Rain (Tran Anh Hung, 2009)

I think this is a bad film to start off from someone who has yet to see Scent of Green Papaya. I Come With The Rain was partly shot in Diwalwal, Compostela Valley province in Mindanao, Philippines – roughly around 4-5 hours (with the terrain in Diwalwal) from the city where I live. Everyone I know was excited to see this when news exploded that Josh Hartnett was flying here on to Diwalwal - a gold mine area - to shoot. But so far the film has ended in bootleg havens of the city, with the mass of Josh fanatics even unaware of its existence.

It was painful to sit through it. I think it was trying to be too serious with its battered protagonist and this psychological thriller that the entire mood can’t even get close too. Josh Hartnett trots across Asia (also visits Hong Kong) to track down a millionaire’s son only to find he is some sort of “messiah” or something to that extent, while he gets over his personal demons (and such creepy demonic recollections). There are some visual highlights but the pseudo-Christian symbolisms smacks right at you in the face I’m actually considering taking off that pseudo prefix. It does refer to Christian symbolisms clumsily. Hartnett, in exploring this character, reaches for something there, but I think it’s really a mess, that he ends up groping in the dark.