Sangre sobre el sol

I must admit at the outset that Jimmy Cagney is not my favourite Hollywood personality, though I did enjoy this movie. (I just can't help thinking that he's going to break out into "Yankee Doodle" any minute). I thought this to be an interesting drama, with a bit of action (thought the martial arts scenes left a lot to be desired) and good performances by the leads. The story was great and that alone was enough to keep me interested all the way through. It seemed to be trying to be "noir" by having most of the elements of a true noir there, but as a whole I wouldn't classify it as such. Worth a look. The DVD copy I bought is excellent, a really clear copy with great sound.

Entertaining Anti-Japanese drama centering on James Cagney as an American editor in 1930's Japan involved in breaking the Japanese plot to invade China and bomb the United States. This film is interesting in that it fairly represents the anti-Japanese sentiment going on in the US since Pearl Harbor. Cagney, as always, is solid in this character as well as the other principals. As usual, the lead Japanese characters are played by Caucasian actors as was the custom of the times. Good Judo sequence for Cagney fans..

The only reason this film gets as high as a five from me is because of James Cagney who made everything he was in a little bit better or appear to be so.

Blood on the Sun, coming out as it did in 1945 as World War II was ending focused on an incident from 1929. A document called the Tanaka Memorial which was purportedly a memorandum by the then Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka Giichi to Emperor Showa was leaked to U.S. media. It laid forth Japanese intentions to dominate the Pacific, Asia, and even the USA.

Problem was that when the Americans did occupy Japan, General MacArthur sent Army intelligence into sifting through Japanese files. Guess what? No Tanaka Memorial. A lot of people now consider the thing to have been a big old hoax perpetrated by the Chinese who were looking for friends back in 1929 because they rightly suspected Japanese intentions towards them.

So Blood in the Sun came out just in time as the belief in the Tanaka Memorial was still credible.

The brothers Cagney, William and James, produced this. But without the production values of the brothers Warner, this film looks like it was shot on the cheap. Jimmy Cagney played Nick Condon, a reporter who got a copy of the Tanaka Memorial and smuggled it out of Japan.

A lot of the cast played Eurasian roles and looked pretty silly too. Sylvia Sidney, John Emery and especially Robert Armstrong who may have conquered King Kong, but couldn't sound Oriental to save his life.

After James Cagney won his Academy Award for Best Actor, he broke free of Warner Bros. and began focusing on what he considered to be art. Cagney's own production company made this wartime thriller, and it is one of his better efforts among his 1940's independent works. Cagney plays an American newspaper reporter living in Japan who crosses wires with the expansionist Japanese government. Cagney's character is fluent in both Japanese and Chinese, and even knows judo. It's refreshing to see a film from the immediate post-war era that doesn't try to simplify the problem of what happened in Japan and Germany with something like - If only these people would start playing baseball, learn to love hot dogs, and be more like Americans, this sort of thing would never have happened.

Cagney's character, Nick Condun, has to hide some expansionist Japanese plans from the Japanese government until he can safely get the data to the American embassy. Along the way he finds an ally in half-Chinese Sylvia Sydney's character Iris Hilliard, who becomes Nick's love interest. One thing about the production code you have to understand - interracial love is strictly taboo, so Nick and Iris' love scenes are less than satisfying. At the end of the film they share just the tiniest bit of a kiss.

Cagney is always fun to watch whether he's on an unrighteous or righteous tear, so I'd recommend it even if the script could have perhaps been a little more lively to match the energy of the lead actor.

Garrett Fort wrote this interesting story about an America journalist working in Pre-war Japan. Because he is well known reporter his contrive and fabricated article revealing secret invasion plans is seen as a plot against Americas. Jimmy Cagney plays Nick Condon a fast-talking plain spoken Newspaperman who is soon targeted as a threat to Japanese politicians and is marked to be kidnapped and killed. However, the plotters need to retrieve a secret document in his possession. Sylvia Sidney plays Iris Hilliard a double agent out to confuse both sides. Interestingly enough, viewers get to see Robert Armstrong who once headlined the movie 'King Kong' playing the heavy Col. Hideki Tojo. The movie is in Black and white and despite it's standard formula set in the 1940's, the movie plays out for interesting fare. Pay close attention to the Judo fight scene in which Cagney does his own stunts and his opponent is in real life his Judo instructor. A fine movie for fans of the late Jimmy Cagney. ***