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List Price: $9.98 | | Label: 20th Century Fox
Salesrank: 55809
Released: May 21, 2002 |
| Our Price: $2.99 |
| Used Price: $1.18 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
A Los Angeles special liaison officer (Wesley Snipes) is called in to investigate the murder of a call-girl in the boardroom of a Japanese corporation. Accompanied by a detective with unusual knowledge of the Japanese culture (Sean Connery), the two men must unravel the mystery behind the murder by entering an underground "shadow world" of futuristic technology, ancient ways and confusing loyalties.
Description of Rising Sun:
Author Michael Crichton and director Philip Kaufman had a falling-out over the script for this film, based on Crichton's best-selling novel (which was controversial for its take on the Japanese invasion of American business in the early '90s). Kaufman ultimately won, doing an above-average job creating a murder mystery based on the culture clash between Los Angeles cops and Japanese multinational business interests. When a prostitute is murdered at the opening of a new L.A. headquarters for a Japanese company, detective Wesley Snipes is forced to call upon retired cop (and Japanophile) Sean Connery to help solve the murder. But he runs into obstruction from the Japanese, as well as a high-tech cover-up, while having to deal with anti-Japanese sentiments from people on his own team. Intriguing if overlong. --Marshall Fine
Rising Sun Reviews:
Sean Connery Rules 
2009-11-25 - It is hard for a movie not to be good when it has Sean Connery in it.
High-Tech Whodunnit 
2009-04-21 - This movie is not always easy to understand but if you give it a couple of looks - and the DVD is worth it -all the pieces finally fit and it's a good two hours of entertainment.
This modern-day crime movie may have a lack of action compared to others of its genre but it never loses your attention. Sean Connery, Wesley Snipes and Harvey Keitel star, along with Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Kevin Anderson, Mako and Tia Carrere. This is a high-tech story (at least for 1993) as two cops try to figure out who murdered a woman.
It's Japanese-big business-politics intrigue with surveillance cameras being the key to figuring out a murder. Connery and Snipes complement each other as a "buddy" cop duo with Connery being mostly responsible for making this story interesting. The suave ex-James Bond plays the cool veteran and it's fun to watch him operate.
The only complaint I might have is the ending, a stupid romance-type story with Snipes and Carrere that was very post-climactic and not needed.
Much Better Audio
2008-05-03 - This "Blu-ray" version is excellent. The video portion is much smoother and the audio is "far superior" to the regular DVD. One has to appreciate that this movie was initially released on VHS and the regular DVD of it was not much of an improvement. This blu-ray takes care of all the VHS flaws of the origional DVD release.
The Blackmail of a Senator
2008-03-03 - Rising Sun concerns the struggle to win and at what expense. It's story begins with the news that Senator Morton will vote against the sale of Micro-Con to Nakamoto which effectively ends their negotiations with the company, Micro-Con, and allows them to look into another offer. Somebody is determined to change the Senator's mind by way of a blackmail scheme. Who was involved? Tanaka, the head of Security was running the office at the time of the party. Cheryl Austin, the murdered woman, was undoubtedly involved. She choose a place for sex with the Morton under a camera. Richmond was informed by Mr. N's aide at the party and killed her after she had finished. Who could have informed the aide but Tanaka. Wasn't somebody using the gizmo for close-ups? When Eddie left the party he went upstairs to check on the Senator and Cheryl. When he spotted them on the board room table under the camera did he conclude that Cheryl and Tanaka were double-crossing him? Eddie thought that he had the Senator in his pocket but the disc would surely change his vote the other way. Was it Tanaka's bad luck that Eddie appeared? Did he leave the party or go downstairs to the Security office to recover the tape? Was N's aide or Richmond aware of these developments? Was Cheryl's murder planned by them? Who was holding the original disc? And who really made the copy? And why was Connor given the Golf Club membership? Was he on the take? Webb Smith believed so. Or was it gratitude for his discretion on something that had gotten out of control? Connor could have done things and asked questions to the embarassment of many people and firms. Didn't Eddie plead with Connor not to arrest him and promise him the disc at the other party? There's far more to Rising Sun than a murder. I never cared for Wesley Snipes but I do in this film. He really did a fine job but was overshadowed by Sean Connery and a really fine cast. Both characters develop through the film. Phillip Kaufmann is a fine director. Too many people are looking for action adventure and fail to appreciate one of the better whodunits that I've seen in years.
One of Crichton's best novels becomes a below-par thriller 
2008-02-15 - Rising Sun is a textbook example of how to take a sure-fire, can't lose property and cock it up completely. It's not just a matter of the producers controversially changing the nationality of the killer that makes Rising Sun such a appointment: where Michael Crichton's novel weaved a multi-stranded web, turning issues into clues and bombarding the reader with information and clues to keep you guessing, director Philip Kaufman simplifies and makes it all patently predictable. Subplots are poorly handled, often either never followed through or simply forgotten, and you don't even care that much about who done it, or why.
Of course, there is a difference between what makes a good book and what makes a good film, but before the rot set in Crichton didn't just write novels that read well, he wrote novels that play - turning one of his books into a film should be more a matter of editing than adapting. Yet, extraordinarily, the producers have either dropped or diluted everything that made the novel such a huge bestseller.
Crichton's strength was always his ability to put over big issue in a pulp format, but while Kaufman does tidy up his typically messy ending, hedrops most of the issues, patronisingly soft-pedalling the novel's economic/political debate, leaving just the pulp. It's rather like making The Third Man and ditching all that guff about cuckoo clocks and black marketeering, and getting rid of Orson for good measure. It may now be a gaijin who kills the girl, but it's Kaufman who kills the movie.
Kaufman has shown he can take mainstream material and imbue it with a greater significance and still turn out a terrific picture with Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Right Stuff (and let's not forget, he was one of the creators of Indiana Jones), but perhaps he'd just spent too long making art movies in the interim. Here there's a snobbery to his direction, a contempt for his material that shines through in almost every frame - he thinks he's better than this, but still comes out looking like an amateur.
Where Crichton's novel was not the racist tract many claimed at the time (Crichton's criticism wass aimed directly at America's short-sighted business/political strategy), Kaufman's film comes perilously close to being just that. The xenophobia of the scene where Snipes sets some homeboys on the Japanese who are following him is an uncomfortable and tasteless exercise in ethnic stereotyping that doesn't belong in this movie.
The most astonishing lapse is in the appallingly acted and staged scene where Snipes is interrogated by his superiors. While this provides the novel with an effective framing device, only a complete idiot would include the American PR man for the Japanese corporation implicated in the conspiracy and a muckraking reporter among those present. Kaufman does. Not only is he hopeless at staging action, but scenes such as the suicide are handled with an ineptitude bordering on the infantile while some of the sexual overtones are feeble beyond belief - hey, don't forget that close-up of the next door neighbour's crotch so we know what Wesley's thinking, Phil! If anything, the absolute stinker of an epilogue is even worse, coming on like the warm wrap-up to a 70s cop show and spelling out Connery and Carrere's relationship just in case we're too thick to work it out for ourselves.
Much blame for this must attach itself to executive producer Sean Connery. Too many years of being denied his due as an actor and still, one suspects, trying to overcompensate for his years in Bondage have left him a sucker for a 'quality' director and a name writer, often with disastrous consequences (cf. A Good Man in Africa). Yet if Kaufman kills the movie, Connery gives it the kiss of life. Connery is never less than watchable, and he's certainly one of the few things worth watching here, whether barking Japanese in a Scottish accent or deliberately losing at golf. It's one of the best displays of pure star quality energising a moribund picture you're likely to see.
Wesley Snipes is wildly miscast in a role that didn't just have Andy Garcia's name on it but his address and a photo of his wife and kids as well. Instead we get a another of his typically one-note aggressiveone-size-fits all performances. Supporting performances are dubious at best, with Mako, Carey-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Stan Egi faring best, countered by Ray Wise and Kevin Anderson, both even phonier than their roles.
When Rising Sun concentrates on the plot mechanics, such as the manipulation of an incriminating recording of the murder, it's fine, but what should have been great is merely an average potboiler distinguished by Connery's presence. Rupert Murdoch, who took a strong personal interest in the picture, said that if they got it wrong they deserved a sound kick in the a**. If you happen to run into him, you might want to take him up on that.
