Blue Rain Review

The gist: It's the old dirty cop/good cop movie, with a little "Training Day" flavor. Mr. Marcus might not be quite as good as Denzel Washington as the bad cop, but Kaylani Lei is an improvement over Ethan Hawke.

Mr. Marcus is running a rogue crew of cops, and Kaylani has been assigned to infiltrate it. Kaylani is grilled by her superiors in a framing device shot in black-and-white, with the movie unfolding in flashbacks. We see Kaylani assimilating herself into the group, getting interested in Marcus, being forced into a climactic confrontation with him, and then dealing with the consequences.

If you were wondering what the heck the title means, Kaylani's character is somewhat implausibly named Blue Rain. I wonder if she's related to Taylor, Misty, or Amber?

The play-by-play: We start easy, with a blowjob scene. Marcus and a colleague are on a night stakeout in their car. These things can be boring, so Marcus has Domino help keep him awake. She's dressed down in a white tank top and a pseudo-gangsta headscarf as she services him in the front seat. He stands up just long enough to deliver a messy pop to her lips. It's a small scene, but Domino definitely looks good doing what she's doing, and it sets up Marcus' character nicely.

Eric Masterson and Harley Davis, two of the cops on Marcus' task force, celebrate a bust (and their illicit take) with a romp at home on the couch. Harley's looking pretty butch here -- which is in character, I suppose -- but not in a bad way. As director Michael Raven says in the commentary, "She looks good with a gun in her hand and a dick in her mouth." After a fair amount of time spent in oral, we get cowgirl, doggie, and brief bits of reverse cowgirl and mish, almost all of which is shot a little too close-up for my taste. Then again, the one time we pull back a little bit in the doggie, the shot gives us an unflattering view of the puckering on Harley's implants. A pop on the belly ends an uninspiring scene.

Another of Marcus' cohorts, played by Lexington Steele, has a little party with Avena Lee and Vanessa. But Avena basically just masturbates in a chair while she watches Lex plow Vanessa on the couch. The scene looks like it's shot with the natural sunlight from the window, which creates a lot of contrast and shadows and some artsy overexposure. We get better wide shots in this scene, especially in cowgirl when Vanessa rides Lex with good energy. A little ball-licking coaxes Lex into giving her an above-average facial. Avena finally comes back over to share it.

OK, we're 45 minutes into the movie and we haven't even seen Kaylani naked yet. So after an action scene with some gunplay, she hits the showers back at the station. Harley corners her in the locker room, and Kaylani does a fine job of playing her reluctance to jump into some girl-girl action. But we know she will, and the towels hit the floor. They keep it pretty natural and believable: kissing, fingers, oral -- no magically appearing implements. Kaylani has a nice sheen on her, and the 69 is attractive, but once I've seen it I'm ready to move on.

So we're off to a ritzy affair attended by high-powered politicians and drug dealers, hosted by Valentino and his wife, the lovely Olivia Del Rio. Eventually they steal away to the bedroom, but not to be with each other -- Valentino pairs up with Simone, and Olivia brings Marcus. Olivia looks fabulous in her long red dress, and when Marcus lies back on the edge of the bed, she starts lapdancing him, grinding her ass on him in a slow, seductive rhythm that looks seriously hot. She gives a sexy look over her shoulder at her husband that's out of this world. She looks great giving head, she looks great in cowgirl, she looks great in doggie, and what do you know, she looks pretty good in mish leading up to a pop on the bush. It's just a blowjob for Simone, but she gives it a spirited finish, jerking it with two hands for a nice facial.

Kaylani apparently grew a little jealous waiting around at that party, and she takes Marcus home to get some for herself. After being dressed pretty casually for most of the movie, the party provides an excuse to get her glammed up and gorgeous for her only boy-girl scene. She's very petite, so Marcus looks pretty massive in her mouth. She mostly gets to work at her own pace in cowgirl before Marcus takes over in standing doggie, but the energy never gets too very high. The pop goes on the chest, and then we wrap up the plot.

Pros: There's a smattering of good dialogue. My favorite line came before an action sequence as the cops are gearing up. Marcus looks at Kaylani's shirt and says, "You wore pink to a bust?" In general, Marcus and Kaylani give good acting performances, and the plot portions of the movie are very watchable. The porn cheesiness factor is close to zero.

The cast is a nice rainbow coalition, if that matters. There are multiple African Americans, Asians, Latins and Caucasians in sex roles.

I think I covered what I thought of Olivia Del Rio. The vibe of the scene was also very good, with the exhibitionism/voyeurism being shared between her and Valentino, flirting with each other while they're having sex with other people. Pretty hot.

Shot in widescreen.

Cons: There might not be quite enough Kaylani here. She does spend an awful lot of time on screen, but not a lot of time fucking.

I usually don't care about a disc's menus, but these are lame enough to warrant comment. It's like we're back in 1997 with primitive 3D animation, like those old Vivid "rooms," if you know what I'm talking about. Ugh. I hate having to sit through those five seconds of crap every time I want to navigate somewhere.

My main DVD player (a Pioneer 301-disc changer) coughs this disc up. Two different copies failed to play. The menus came up fine, but any time you tried to access the movie itself, it went to stop. Both copies played fine on my Xbox, however, which is how I watched it. I have no idea what causes such a thing. This is the only movie, porn or mainstream, I've ever had such an occurrence with.

DVD extras: Decent. There's a 7-minute behind-the-scenes reel, which is much shorter than usual for a Wicked disc, and it's mainly an interview of Raven with some clips interspersed. There's a short and forgettable blooper reel that consists mainly of lines being fucked up. There's "The Girls of Blue Rain", which is footage of photo shoots. The main bonus is a commentary with Raven and Kaylani. It's a little dull, with a lot of dead spots -- Raven doesn't seem as chatty as Wicked's other directors. The best bits are probably Kaylani talking about wanting implants, and Raven trying to talk her out of it.

Summing up: This is a solid outing from Michael Raven, but as time goes on and we have more Kaylani movies to choose from, this might not end up as the go-to pick.

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