While his PATTON Oscar-winning screenplay gave Francis Ford Coppola the power and clout to direct two of the greatest (or perhaps THE greatest) motion pictures ever made... both GODFATHER films... it was THE RAIN PEOPLE that proved he could invest worthy meantime in flawed human beings...
In an independent road movie starring Shirley Knight as a married woman haunted with frantic memories of her wedding party and wedding night, and hitchhiking James Caan as a man-child who, once a star college football player having suffered a severe head injury, passively relies on Knight as a kind of mother figure, protecting him from various selfish small town residents when she can hardly take care of herself.
The best scenes are their moments together, trying to understand what one... Knight in a headstrong yet reluctantly sympathetic performance... is escaping from and the other... Caan with subtle finesse yet holding back formidable strength... is heading towards within the randomly rainy landscape: a kind of hopeless, melancholy character in itself...
Fading into a practically separate third act involving Robert Duvall as a highway cop with precocious, preteen yet adult-minded daughter Marya Zimmet (who could have had her own movie growing in a shoddy trailer park), the results are predictable yet inevitable and hopelessly universal... while Coppola's use of flashbacks help elevate the otherwise deliberately futile journey.
In an independent road movie starring Shirley Knight as a married woman haunted with frantic memories of her wedding party and wedding night, and hitchhiking James Caan as a man-child who, once a star college football player having suffered a severe head injury, passively relies on Knight as a kind of mother figure, protecting him from various selfish small town residents when she can hardly take care of herself.
The best scenes are their moments together, trying to understand what one... Knight in a headstrong yet reluctantly sympathetic performance... is escaping from and the other... Caan with subtle finesse yet holding back formidable strength... is heading towards within the randomly rainy landscape: a kind of hopeless, melancholy character in itself...
Fading into a practically separate third act involving Robert Duvall as a highway cop with precocious, preteen yet adult-minded daughter Marya Zimmet (who could have had her own movie growing in a shoddy trailer park), the results are predictable yet inevitable and hopelessly universal... while Coppola's use of flashbacks help elevate the otherwise deliberately futile journey.