It begins in the small town of Huntingburg just as it’s being evacuated due to rising flood waters. Those who remain are the town’s sheriff (Randy Quaid) and two of his deputies, a woman named Karen (Minnie Driver), who stays behind to save the church she’s worked to restore, an old couple who refuse to budge, a pair of armored-car drivers Charlie and Tom (Ed Asner and Christian Slater), plus a team of bandits led by a man named Jim (Morgan Freeman).

Just as Charlie and Tom are making their way through town, loaded down with $3 million in cash, their truck stalls in the water and they are soon greeted by Jim and his men. One gunfight later, Charlie floats away with a bullet in his neck, and Tom is off swimming, pulling the bags of money along. Jim intuits that Tom will stash the money, so he orders the men to find Tom and not kill him until he leads them to the money.

Meanwhile, Tom does hide the money and seeks a place to hide. He happens upon the church and a crucifix-wielding Karen, who clocks him over the head and then drags him off to the police station. There, Tom tells the sheriff his story, and the sheriff agrees to check it out. What Tom doesn’t know is that this sheriff is the outgoing sheriff and as such has made the impulsive decision to go out with that armored-car money.

What follows is a series of chases: Tom is pursued by the bad guys, the sheriff pursues the bad guys, the bad guys pursue the sheriff, and Tom pursues the sheriff, and so on. This action is punctuated by near-drownings and electrocutions. In fact, if one positive thing can be said about Hard Rain, written by Graham Yost (Broken Arrow, Speed) and directed by Mikael Salomon (A Far Off Place) it is that it moves swiftly and only really drags at the end. But that’s basically it. The script is filled with some truly bad dialogue (the highlight being when an old man says the f-word) and cliched characters (a true-blue cop destined to die and a Bible-quoting thug destined to die).

Though the cast is solid enough, the script leaves them dog-paddling. Freeman gives his normally composed performance, and Quaid and Slater muddle through as best they can, but Driver’s thick-mouthed American accent makes the movie just that much worse.