Taiyô wo nusunda otoko

Kazuhiko Hasegawa is a great film director.

Though I have been an enthusiastic fan of Kazuhiko Hasegawa's, in the beginning I've had no connection with him, and moreover, I am an ordinary office worker. One day I heard a sad news, "Kubrick is dead", which made me decide to establish Kazuhiko-Hasegawa's website. That's because I believe it is only Hasegawa that can make films like Kubrick's works. After a while, I got a connection with him through the cyberspace, and exchanged opinions each other with e-mails, which we called "e-sessions". One day I suddenly received his phone call. He just said to me, "I want to begin my project on your site"........ Thus I have built up the website to let people submit their scenarios for his new film.

Very well make... there are car chasing, gun shooting and even more... after watching this movie you may know how to make an atomic bomb!! Try to pick up this film in Video or Vcd.

The best thing that can be said about The Man Who Stole The Sun is that it runs for 2.5 hours and never feels boring or overlong. The worst thing that can be said about it is there's a couple of time where it looks like they were mean to a cat while filming, which is never nice (it's thankfully briefer and less difficult to handle than an infamous scene in Satantango).

It follows a teacher who decides to build an atomic bomb, and then makes a series of demands by threatening to detonate it. It begins as a satirical crime movie, gradually morphs into a thriller, and then explodes into action in the last half-hour or so. Along the way, it can be pretty funny at times, having a tone where calling it light or non-serious would maybe feel inaccurate, but it's definitely fun (while being kind of dark, once you step back and look at the whole thing).

All in all, it's a riot. It's rare to get a movie that's around (or over) two and a half hours where I don't ever feel ready for it to end, which I think is a testament to how well-paced and creative this is, above all else just being very entertaining. As much as I'm looking forward to Oppenheimer, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the best movie about atomic weapons that I watch in 2023.

A high school science teacher steals plutonium and builds his own atomic bomb. A game of cat and mouse arises between him and a hard-nosed police detective.

Utterly preposterous stuff, but has moments of great fun, and an unusual East-meets-West sensibility, presumably because of being made entirely in Japan by Japanese folks but written by Paul Schrader's brother Leonard, who inserted some peak-1979-Hollywood car chases and action scenes.

It's not a great film, but it's got a lot going for it, and if you like strange Japanese films you should definitely check it out, as it's hard to think of anything else quite like it.

6½/10.

The Man Who Stole the Sun treads the finest of lines in trying to balance its subject matter and tone, but Kazuhiko Hasegawa's controversial movie about nuclear terrorism is a darkly comedic and thrilling satire on a subject once considered unsatiriseable annihilating any form of genre borders in the process. Holding particular resonance for Japanese audiences, as while the country does use nuclear power, it has long held against amassing a nuclear arsenal due to the devastating effects that ended World War II. The movie doesn't stop dead for any form of long-winded nationalistic or philosophical speeches and instead insists on a conceivable reality with seemingly no motivation.

One of only two movies directed by Kazuhiko Hasegawa, which in turn feels like a crime in itself, Hasegawa rewards the viewer with some utterly sublime direction and excellent framing, with plenty of thrilling action set pieces to command his viewer's attention at all times (the car chase feels like it was ripped right out of a Ringo Lam movie). It balances the unorthodox nature and tone of the movie exceptionally well, juxtaposing the shifts with unnatural ease. Complimented by funky and often ill-fitting music by Takayuki Inoue to glorious success.

The performances are all excellent, with Kenji Sawada playing the everyman gone rogue with an endless amount of animosity slowly succumbing to the effects of radiation poisoning making him more and more unpredictable as the movie goes on. But it's the award-winning performance from the stoic and hardened Bunta Sugawara that really captivates me as he normally does in his roles, single-minded and exceptionally driven.

Overall, The Man Who Stole the Sun, even at two and a half hours long, never feels overly long or bloated. The film absolutely refuses to limit itself, and that's why it's so entertaining and impressive.