HARD RAIN

HARD RAIN Christian Slater, Morgan Freeman, Minnie Driver (1998, Paramount, R, $101.99) ''Take Broken Arrow'' and add water. And lo-cal artificial predicaments. Instead of tangling with weapons hijackers in the desert as he did in ''Arrow,'' Slater now tangles with armored-car robbers in a flooded town. Why an armored car is transporting millions of dollars during a flood of Old Testament proportions is not exactly clear. But then nothing else makes much sense either, including an innocuous character who, halfway through the movie, suddenly transforms into a diabolical villain for no discernible reason. Armageddon's vacuity may represent a new low to some critics, but in its thoroughgoing fatuousness, this tape offers another instructive example of exactly what stinks about modern action movies.

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