Sol levante

Having just left us, Sean Connery's movies are all over cable TV right now. From the over-rated and mostly execrable Bond series, through the unloved but brilliant The Hill, and on through his later-career home runs such as Red October and The Untouchables.

Rising Sun is one of these latter-day Sean Connery movies. Here he's trying to bridge the cultural gap between the Japanese and Americans in a murder mystery. And as usual, he's way better than the movie itself. Connery is smooth and natural and completely believable as a guy who understands the Japanese language and culture. Also in the plus column belong Harvey Keitel and Wesley Snipes.

But goodness the drop-off from there is enormous. The supporting cast would be hard-pressed to hold up their end of an L.A. Law episode. Ray Wise is esp terrible. As for the Asian actors, well, at least they were able to pick up a nice Hollywood paycheque. Kurosawa this isn't. More like an extra-long episode of Magnum, P.I.

The plot is a mess. It might have seemed interesting to hang a plot on a Japanese corporation's takeover of an American tech firm, but that seems laughably old-fashioned these days.

Connery and Snipes, as far as I can tell, put in about 3 weeks of detective work in one 24-hour stretch. As for the ultimate perp, phhhht, you'd have to be pretty dense not to see that coming.

The fight scene near the end was a nice touch. Pointless, but fun.

And then it keeps going. Like Kaufmann shot a million feet of film and couldn't bring himself to cut any of it.

The background of the film is the American-Japonese business competition in L.A. where a cop (Wesley Snipes) accused by corruption teams up with old man (Sean Connery) , expert on Japanese world . They're investigating a killing case filmed in videotape recording and located at an important corporation run by powerful manager (Mako)and it implicates a senator (Ray Wise) . The homicide is committed on a boardroom table while a beautiful prostitute is strangled when having sex with her lover , being prime suspect a Japanese executive (Gary -Hiroyuki Tagawa). The identity of the murderer is taken by a security camera on a missing disk . Meantime , another tough police( Harvey Keitel) is also investigating and they're helped by a gorgeous video expert (Tia Carrere). Soon discover on the final breaking point that even the truth can lie .

The tale mingles suspense , thriller , mystery , quick action , buddy movie and is quite entertaining . However , the complicated script contains some flaws and gaps , originating fails on credibility but gets its nice moments here and there . Based on controversial novel by Michael Crichton , it is adapted by Philip Kaufman and Crichton, blending business, Japanese customs, high technology and international politics, turning out some confusing and silly . For that reason, the screenplay was rewritten several times, focusing more the killing suspense and relying heavily on relationship between two leads and the differences US-Japan . Michael Crichton, author of the book and co-author of the screenplay, wrote the part of Connor with Sean Connery in mind. Writers Michael Crichton and Michael Backes quit the project largely over disagreement with director Philip Kaufman that one of the lead characters should be changed into an African-American . Evocative Japanese music score by Takemitsu (Kurosawa's usual musician) and appropriate cinematography with stylized camera techniques by Michael Chapman . This one gets acceptable direction by Philip Kaufman (Quills, Right stuff, Body snatchers) . The film will appeal to Wesley Snipes and Sean Connery fans.

Michael Crichton's Rising Sun is an extensive, dense, unpredictable mess. The actors have a lot of fun and the story is a splurge of entertainment, but it's not paying enough attention to a couple of things. One of them is what its focus is. Is the film about the murder, the two men solving the murder, the clash of American and Japanese cultures, or what? The other thing the film forgets could be a drawback of the first thing. It's that it doesn't tie up all its loose ends. At the end, there are strands left with no ending, even a mysterious ambiguous one. It just ends because it feels the pace of the film requires it to fade out at that particular point.

The film is not bad, mostly because it's far from boring. In fact, there are many scenes of dialogue, despite a few corny scenes of dialogue, that are subtly interesting. We don't quite understand why the exchanges are interesting until later, when we realize that the characters are so deeply contemplated that the scene felt as real as the room you're sitting in. But maybe I'm giving the film too much credit for simply being a load of fun for Michael Crichton to write. After all, he wrote and directed one of the greatest heist films ever made, The Great Train Robbery, also with Sean Connery.

Sean Connery, of course, is the highlight of the film, because there's hardly a way he cannot be. Despite his irrepressible suavity, he does not play himself. He plays a resentful, inflexible, self-indulgent veteran cop, and we are supposed to like Wesley Snipes more because the film centers, well, seems to want to center around his character and also we're given more backstory and information on him. However, we don't like Snipes more than him. Connery may play a stubborn old jerk, but I'd rather one of those than a pompous, intolerant, overpround young jerk like Snipes can hardly help but play.

I cannot reach a verdict on this film. How can I? There are so many things to enjoy at the same time they are hazardous to the film's health.

This movie is not always easy to understand but if you give it a couple of looks, which it is worthy of doing, 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 still-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.

This adaptation of Crichton's novel of the same name is flawed, specially in some key casting (Snipes is wrong for the part) and tone choices (the main relationship is badly portrayed, some characters enter and leave without regard and the action scenes seem very off).

However, it makes the grade into the above-average category of high-tech thrillers for the excellent Sir Connery performance and the adherence, in about 80%, to the gripping and quite scary, economically speaking, original plot.

Crichton was never afraid to take a stand and the movie version, although clearly into a more action-driven-politically-correct approach, tried to present a more layered portrayal of the business war arena, without hiding the author's criticism of the American posture towards the velvet covered Japanese iron hand on such matters, which is refreshing.

The pace is lightning fast, the convoluted plot is presented in a very satisfactory fashion - the audience can understand what is going on and why - and the almost 2-hour movie passes by with grace.

The little disappointment goes for the last 20 minutes, that present a rather stupid conclusion (different from the book, I might add) and wastes the audience time with perfunctory developments that could, easily, have remained in the edit room floor.