FemaleFirst.co.uk: DVD: Rising Sun [DVD] [1993]

Rising Sun [DVD] [1993]
enlarge	Director: Philip Kaufman Actors: Sean Connery, Wesley Snipes, Harvey Keitel, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Kevin Anderson Studio: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Category: DVD List Price: ~~£12.99~~ Buy Used: £1.58 as of 22/11/2009 00:38 GMT details You Save: £11.41 (88%) New (13) Used (19) from £1.58 Seller: zoverstocks Rating: 4 reviews Sales Rank: 24962 Format: PAL, Widescreen Languages: Czech (Subtitled), Danish (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), Finnish (Subtitled), Hebrew (Subtitled), Hungarian (Subtitled), Icelandic (Subtitled), Norwegian (Subtitled), Polish (Subtitled), Portuguese (Subtitled), Swedish (Subtitled), English (Original Language) Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over Region: 2 Discs: 1 Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Number Of Discs: 1 Running Time: 124 Minutes Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2 Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6 EAN: 5039036002868 ASIN: B00004SC7V Theatrical Release Date: July 30, 1993 Release Date: October 4, 2004 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days


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Editorial Reviews: Amazon.co.uk Review Author Michael Crichton and director Philip Kaufman had a falling-out over the script for IRising Sun/i, based on Crichton's best-selling novel (which was controversial for its take on the Japanese invasion of American business in the early 1990s). Kaufman ultimately won, doing an above-average job creating a murder-mystery based on the culture clash between Los Angeles cops and Japanese multinational business interests. When a prostitute is murdered at the opening of a new LA headquarters for a Japanese company, detective Wesley Snipes is forced to call upon retired cop (and Japanophile) Sean Connery to help solve the murder. But he runs into obstruction from the Japanese, as well as a high-tech cover-up, while having to deal with anti-Japanese sentiments from people on his own team. IRising Sun/I is intriguing, if overlong. --IMarshall Fine, Amazon.com/I

Customer Reviews: Sean Connery at his best January 3, 2001 gaz@gsherwood.freeserve.co.uk (N.Ireland) 10 out of 10 found this review helpful An excellant movie, a crime thriller that keeps you guessing from start to finish. Brilliant cast members and acting, a must see for any fans of Connery or Snipes. However there is a dissapointing lack of extra features on the DVD version. A great movie time time again February 23, 2004 James Cameron (a world of my own) 7 out of 7 found this review helpful this movie is the best the "who-done-it" mystery/suspense genere...simply in my opnion cos you can watch it time and time again and not get bored with it.pSean Connery is on his usuall top form which mkes wesley Snipes performace that much better.pa great supporting cast and a wonderfull story that will thrill for years to come.pA must for any movie fan. Moderate Adaptation of a Crichton Best Seller May 1, 2007 Jay (Mauritius) 2 out of 3 found this review helpful Michael Crichton is the king of details when comes to his books. His stories go down to the absolute detailed mechanics of their subject so that we arise knowing a little more about it then we did when we started - This is a guy who does his homework. Rising Sun was about eccentricities of a competitive Japanese conglomerate. He really got inside this world and gave you a feel for what it must be like on the inside. br / br /What aggravates me about `Rising Sun' as a movie is that it seems to have been adapted by someone who learned by watching cop-buddy movies. It takes place in Los Angeles where a new Japanese conglomerate is just getting started. A woman is found dead in a conference room strangled to death and the killer seems to be the girl's lover Eddie Sakamura (Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa) who is a shrewd businessman with some ties in the criminal underworld. But in order to keep the new conglomerate from looking bad right from the start, they decide to call in a crime expert. br / br /Enter John Conner (Sean Connery), a worldly-wise detective who is able to figure things out just by observation the way Sherlock Holmes might have. His Watson is Web Smith (Wesley Snipes) one of those slick movie cops who constantly insults his partner and throws out a stream of glib one-liners because well - he's a black movie cop. br / br /This combination is what sets the movie on the wrong track. For most of the movie Connery uses his knowledge of Japanese culture and motives to gather information while Snipes stands by and tosses out a joke and gives the wrong information. Why was this necessary? Why does the sidekick have to be wrong all the time. Why isn't he able to counter Connery's information with his own knowledge? I could imagine a good sidekick being played by, say Giancarlo Giannini. You would have two very intelligent men working together instead of the approach of having Snipes say something stupid and Connery countering it. br / br /And what about the dead girl? There is never an attempt to give us much emotional interest in her. She is just a sexy model, killed in a kinky murder to be the movie's McGuffin. There is actually more time spent on the video of the murder then on the victim. A video disk was taken of the killer with the face blotted out and covered with the image of someone else, but who cares? This is a movie with so little emotional interest. One of Crichton's best novels becomes a below-par thriller January 28, 2008 Trevor Willsmer (London, England) 1 out of 1 found this review helpful Rising Sun is a textbook example of how to take a sure-fire, can't lose property and muck it up completely. It's not just a matter of the producers controversially changing the nationality of the killer that makes Rising Sun such a appointment: where Michael Crichton's novel weaved a multi-stranded web, turning issues into clues and bombarding the reader with information and clues to keep you guessing, director Philip Kaufman simplifies and makes it all patently predictable. Subplots are poorly handled, often either never followed through or simply forgotten, and you don't even care that much about who done it, or why. br / br /Of course, there is a difference between what makes a good book and what makes a good film, but before the rot set in Crichton didn't just write novels that read well, he wrote novels that play - turning one of his books into a film should be more a matter of editing than adapting. Yet, extraordinarily, the producers have either dropped or diluted everything that made the novel such a huge bestseller. br / br /Crichton's strength was always his ability to put over big issue in a pulp format, but while Kaufman does tidy up his typically messy ending, hedrops most of the issues, patronisingly soft-pedalling the novel's economic/political debate, leaving just the pulp. It's rather like making The Third Man and ditching all that guff about cuckoo clocks and black marketeering, and getting rid of Orson for good measure. It may now be a gaijin who kills the girl, but it's Kaufman who kills the movie. br / br /Kaufman has shown he can take mainstream material and imbue it with a greater significance and still turn out a terrific picture with Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Right Stuff (and let's not forget, he was one of the creators of Indiana Jones), but perhaps he'd just spent too long making art movies in the interim. Here there's a snobbery to his direction, a contempt for his material that shines through in almost every frame - he thinks he's better than this, but still comes out looking like an amateur. br / br /Where Crichton's novel was not the racist tract many claimed at the time (Crichton's criticism wass aimed directly at America's short-sighted business/political strategy), Kaufman's film comes perilously close to being just that. The xenophobia of the scene where Snipes sets some homeboys on the Japanese who are following him is an uncomfortable and tasteless exercise in ethnic stereotyping that doesn't belong in this movie. br / br /The most astonishing lapse is in the appallingly acted and staged scene where Snipes is interrogated by his superiors. While this provides the novel with an effective framing device, only a complete idiot would include the American PR man for the Japanese corporation implicated in the conspiracy and a muckraking reporter among those present. Kaufman does. Not only is he hopeless at staging action, but scenes such as the suicide are handled with an ineptitude bordering on the infantile while some of the sexual overtones are feeble beyond belief - hey, don't forget that close-up of the next door neighbour's crotch so we know what Wesley's thinking, Phil! If anything, the absolute stinker of an epilogue is even worse, coming on like the warm wrap-up to a 70s cop show and spelling out Connery and Carrere's relationship just in case we're too thick to work it out for ourselves. br / br /Much blame for this must attach itself to executive producer Sean Connery. Too many years of being denied his due as an actor and still, one suspects, trying to overcompensate for his years in Bondage have left him a sucker for a 'quality' director and a name writer, often with disastrous consequences (cf. A Good Man in Africa). Yet if Kaufman kills the movie, Connery gives it the kiss of life. Connery is never less than watchable, and he's certainly one of the few things worth watching here, whether barking Japanese in a Scottish accent or deliberately losing at golf. It's one of the best displays of pure star quality energising a moribund picture you're likely to see. br / br /Wesley Snipes is wildly miscast in a role that didn't just have Andy Garcia's name on it but his address and a photo of his wife and kids as well. Instead we get a another of his typically one-note aggressiveone-size-fits all performances. Supporting performances are dubious at best, with Mako, Carey-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Stan Egi faring best, countered by Ray Wise and Kevin Anderson, both even phonier than their roles. br / br /When Rising Sun concentrates on the plot mechanics, such as the manipulation of an incriminating recording of the murder, it's fine, but what should have been great is merely an average potboiler distinguished by Connery's presence. Rupert Murdoch, who took a strong personal interest in the picture, said that if they got it wrong they deserved a sound kick in the a**. If you happen to run into him, you might want to take him up on that. br /

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