Rising Sun

A thoroughly gratifying prestige thriller, thanks to riveting suspense and two brilliant stars. Read full review

The flaws don't cripple what is a fiercely funny, exciting and provocative detective story about the crimes of corporate culture — crimes that transcend race and geography. Read full review

The film doesn't match the novel's adrenaline level, but is in every other way more stylish and intelligent...Smart, sexy, provocative entertainment. [30 July 1993, p.25]

The current media discussion over whether or not this is a racist film misses how much this is a classic hard-boiled detective novel, the Japanese functioning as an almost faceless evil. Read full review

Rising Sun doesn't work all that well as a thriller: it's far more successful in its old cop/young cop character study, and in its examination of cross-cultural tensions. [30 July 1993, p.C1]

Kaufman can't raise the script far above the pulp material on which it's based, but it's a more intelligent adaptation than this summer's blockbuster movie of Crichton's "Jurassic Park." It's also a more interesting consideration of racial-cultural conflicts than such major-studio gaffes as "Mr. Baseball" and "Falling Down." [30 July 1993, p.D3]

I found it pretty entertaining, as well as provocative in some of its comments about contemporary life. Read full review

Director/chief screenwriter Philip Kaufman used the same kid-glove treatment in his adaptation of Michael Crichton's controversial bestseller, but Rising Sun has enough mystique and chemistry among its stars to be worthwhile adult entertainment. [30 July 1993, p.6]

In the final analysis, Rising Sun is yet another book-to-movie conversion that loses something in the translation. Despite the always-welcome presence of Sean Connery, the film fails to satisfy completely. There are a few too many plot holes and logical errors. Rising Sun may be solidly-paced, but not all aspects of the production are as successful. Read full review

It's a pretty good movie. Ironically, the more even-handed treatment of the Japanese, although probably fairer, may have robbed the tale of some of the single-minded xenophobic nastiness that probably gave the book its trashy energy. [30 July 1993, p.3F]

A triumph of style over content. Like BLADE RUNNER, the film grafts a fiercely modernist feel onto characters and themes right out of a 1940s film noir--an impressive achievement that more than makes up for a ponderous storyline. Read full review

There is some elegant and clever filmmaking in Rising Sun. But ultimately Kaufman and Crichton are a bad fit: trying to transcend the material, the director loses the novelist's crude but compelling urgency. Read full review

What it all comes down to is that Kaufman gets the hard things right and messes up the simple stuff. If there isn't a Japanese saying for that, there certainly ought to be. Read full review

There’s a real spark to Connery’s performance, but except for that Kaufman has produced a middling contradiction, a thriller too polite to hit its target. Read full review

The screenplay by Kaufman, Crichton and Michael Backes is not about much of anything important, and Connery's deep penetrating wisdom takes away some of the suspense: If he knows everything that's going to happen, why keep us in the dark? Read full review

The film's mysteriousness is not profound. Anybody who hasn't guessed the killer's identity after 30 minutes should be forced to watch Rising Sun three times a day until Christmas. Read full review

The best seller's passions were misplaced, but in toning them down, the adaptation turns bland. Read full review

The sad thing about Rising Sun is that for all the controversy surrounding the book, it plays as just another cop drama set against an alien landscape. As so often happens in Hollywood these days, the alien locale is Los Angeles, an L.A. under assault from within and without. Rising Sun the movie doesn't have all that much to say about that condition. It sticks to the safe stuff. [30 July 1993, p.G4]

Snipes seems lost. A key player in the novel by virtue of his first-person narration, Snipes' character - now third-person - is all but a non-person. Mostly, he reacts Watson-style to Connery's Sherlock Holmes musings; an attempt to incorporate Snipes' street buddies into a car chase is the film's weakest scene. [30 July 1993, p.1D]

A wasted effort with a limp storyline that fails to do Michael Crichton's book justice. Read full review

Rising Sun waters down the more contentious aspects of Michael Crichton's controversial bestseller about Japanese influence in the United States, while remaining faithful to its mechanical plotting and superficial characterizations. Read full review

Connery lectures at length on his favourite subject, which wouldn't be so dull if the suspense was more adroitly handled, but Kaufman, regrettably, gets the pacing all wrong. Blowup-style video detection scenes provide a modicum of interest. Read full review

Rising Sun boasts shiny, shiny production values befitting a big-budgeted Sean Connery vehicle adapted from a bestselling novel, but scratch the glossy surface and Rising Sun reveals itself to be a Cinemax-ready B-movie, complete with a rogue’s gallery of villains, each tackier and more ridiculous than the last. Read full review

Rising Sun has gotten everything backward. Mystifying when it should be clear and clear when it should be mystifying, it is the murkiest, most unsatisfying of thrillers. And the biggest mystery of all is how a project that appeared to have so much going for it could have gone so determinedly astray. Read full review