Rising Sun (1993)

At the offices of a Japanese corporation, during a party, a woman, who's evidently a professional mistress, is found dead, apparently after some rough sex. A police detective, Web Smith is ... See full summary »

Director:

Philip Kaufman

Writers:

Michael Crichton (novel), Philip Kaufman (screenplay),

Stars:

Sean Connery, Wesley Snipes, Harvey Keitel

1 win & 1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Sean Connery	...	Capt. John Connor
Wesley Snipes	...	Lt. Webster Smith
Harvey Keitel	...	Lt. Tom Graham
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa	...	Eddie Sakamura
Kevin Anderson	...	Bob Richmond
Mako	...	Yoshida-san
Ray Wise	...	Senator John Morton
Stan Egi	...	Ishihara
Stan Shaw	...	Phillips
Tia Carrere	...	Jingo Asakuma
Steve Buscemi	...	Willy 'the Weasel' Wilhelm
Tatjana Patitz	...	Cheryl Lynn Austin
Peter Crombie	...	Greg
Sam Lloyd	...	Rick
Alexandra Powers	...	Julia

Storyline

At the offices of a Japanese corporation, during a party, a woman, who's evidently a professional mistress, is found dead, apparently after some rough sex. A police detective, Web Smith is called in to investigate but before getting there, he gets a call from someone who instructs him to pick up John Connor, a former police Captain and expert on Japanese affairs. When they arrive there Web thinks that everything is obvious but Connor tells him that there's a lot more going on.

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Plot Keywords:

japanese | police | party | detective | hara kiri | 

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Mystery | Thriller | Action

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for strong sexuality, language and some violence

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

30 July 1993 (USA)

Also Known As:

Sol naciente

Filming Locations:

Japanese Garden, Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant - 6100 Woodley Avenue, Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California, USA

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

£648,293 (UK) (15 October 1993)

Gross:

£2,391,211 (UK) (12 November 1993)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Walrus & Associates

Technical Specs

Runtime:

125 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The murderer's identity was changed from the book for reasons not explained by the director.

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Goofs

When Web and Connor drive in the rain and only Web is shown, the passenger side windscreen wiper reaches the area that is wiped by the other blade. When both Web and Connor are shown, the wiper's travel is shorter and it does not reach the area wiped by the other blade.

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Quotes

Cop: Hey Graham, you want some sushi?
Tom Graham: No thanks. If I get a craving for mercury, I'll eat a thermometer.

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Crazy Credits

There is a credit in Rising Sun thanking "The MIT Leg Lab" and "Marc Raibert and his Running Team." This refers to a short scene where the two detectives go out to a fancy-looking research lab (really a water treatment plant; also used as the set for Starfleet Academy on the TV series "Star Trek - The Next Generation). In the background of some of the shots there are two legged robots: one hopping in a circle in a tea-house; the other bouncing up a garden path. These robots are actually academic research projects from the MIT AI Lab's Legged Locomotion Lab. They really do hop about and maintain their balance. Power comes from off-board hydraulic pumps (hence the guy in the background (me!) pulling hoses for the robot), and body attitude is sensed with gyroscopes. A human with a joystick tells the robot what direction to go, and the control algorithms (which are the real subject of Leg Lab research) maintain speed, direction, and balance. However, the robots aren't designed for special effects. They're always being modified, and they tend to break down frequently. This made shooting in the hot july sun of the San Fernando Valley a real nightmare, with transputers crashing in the heat, stuck gyros, and hydraulic leaks. Three grad students and a professor worked steadily for about a month before Hollywood, and then five days on the set and on location to get the robots in about 15 seconds of film. The credits are: Marc Raibert (our prof), and Charles Francois, Rob Playter and Lee Campbell (me) who are students. We three students appear in the film in white lab coats acting like Robot Scientists!!

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Connections

References Yojimbo (1961)

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Soundtracks

"HOW GONE IS GOODBYE"
Written by Pam Tillis, Bob DiPiero (as Bob Dipiero) and Jan Buckingham
Performed by Pam Tillis
Courtesy of Arista Records

User Reviews

One of the weakest action thrillers I've seen in years.

Rising Sun is an exercise in bad screenwriting. It presents a story about big bad Japanese businessmen/gangsters and the crooked sale of a massive corporation called Microcon. The movie starts off with a goofball karaoke scene where Eddie Sakamura, the lead bad guy in another absolutely awful performance by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, singing a country song called Don't Fence Me In, in a scene that's probably one of the most pathetic attempts to develop a three dimensional character in cinematic history. Ted Danson' Peter Lowenstein in Body Heat (1981) was three dimensional because he had an interest in dancing that went beyond his character's obligatory role in the film. Here, this scene is thrown in at random just so we can try to pretend that this is a real person and not the facelss, stereotypical bad guy that we see for the rest of the film.

Just after this terrible scene ends, we are taken to the meeting about the sale of Microcon, and the movie again trips over itself by trying in pathetic vain to create suspense during nearly silent deliberations over this sale in a conference room, and if you manage to stay awake long enough, a seedy murder soon follows, the solution of which the rest of the movies tries to present. The worst of the screenplay writing comes in about when Sean Connery's John Connor (real creative name, guys) is introduced, and continues pretty much until the end of the film.

Welsey Snipes embarrasses himself by taking on a role in which he serves no other purpose than to be Wesley Snipes so that his name can go on the cover of the movie and trick action fans into thinking this might be another fast paced Snipes film (he's not the best action hero in the world, but he has certainly come out with better stuff than THIS), and to stand around and ask questions like a confused child. From the moment that Connor comes into the story, just about every time any character says anything, it is immediately followed by another character explaining what the hell is going on. There are two lengthy scenes that come almost one right after another where Web Smith (Snipes) and Connor are driving in the car, and Connor is explaining what is going on to the baffled Smith. LAPD nothing, this guy is more clueless than a dropout from Right Hand Roger's 24 Hour Junior Police Academy.

The plot continues to jump through clichéd thriller hoops, with Connor all the while wowing Smith with his tactics and vainly trying to wow the audience as well, but it is somehow very difficult to be entertained by a movie that spends the majority of its running time explaining itself, and sometimes even badly. There is a scene early in the film at the murder investigation where Connor steps into the conversation (because Smith, as he predicted, got himself into trouble) and makes an unpredictable move, and then later when he's explaining to Smith what just happened, he ends by saying, `Now Mr. Yoshida owes me a favor…Deep, isn't it!'

Well, since you asked, no, it's not deep. Not even a little bit. And neither is the rest of the movie.