In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

(Originally reviewed: 07/03/2017) Here is a picture that is simply undone by its plotting, but on the bright side it's never boring and is adequately paced. The film has a watchable cast, but most of the acting isn't anything to brag about; with perhaps the exception of Sean Connery who plays a cultured, honourable police officer, who can control his tempers and tell you life's uncertainties in a fun way at the same time, for which the Japanese have great respect for him and he is very entertaining to watch here. Snipes (Webster Smith) plays the other cop and his is your formulaic, unintelligent cop that doesn't have much respect for rules but he does have human qualities and he's passable at the least. The supporting cast includes Harvey Keitel (L.T Tom Graham), Steve Buscemi (Willy Wilhelm), Cary-Hiroyukii Tagawa (Eddie/main suspect) and Tia Carrere who play's Jingo Asakuma, an expert of some sort willing to try and help them with the investigation.The story is a mess of sorts, every time you think you know something, they change it five minutes later, now plot twists are fine but if you constantly change everything within the story then you lose all credibility, something that crossed my mind during the second half of this picture was that as the story unravels more plot holes appear, looking as if they were changing the script every other minute. There were other things I felt poor here, such as the inclusion of a woman being murdered whilst making sex noises, which is later meant to be a thing that people do, they liked to get strangled or a paper bag over the head whilst having sex, if this is a real thing, then some people have serious mental issued. Later on there is a typical cliché, where someone alluded dies but with no proof of a body and much more incompetent, a scene that doesn't even show a faked murder.Bad dialogue features more times than I care to remember, including "I'm more of a meat and potatoes man", "Get his Ass", not his passport" and "Hay is for Horses", the last quote was from Connery and considering he had some good dialogue in the film, it looks as if the script wasn't kind to anyone. There's random flashbacks throughout the first half which are really methodical in the slightest as it just distracts viewers from the story at hand, personally I would have preferred for them to cut these out altogether. There were some positives however; some of the dialogue is decent, including a quote from Connery "If it's too good to be true, it's not true" and I enjoyed some of the humour such as a romantic exchange between Snipes and Carrere who are getting all close and Connery is in there filming and says "your friend sounds like an idiot", which I found fairly amusing. Though the plotting is especially muddled and messy, especially the third act, Rising Sun is at the very least passable, and the picture looks nice, has some solid direction from Philip Kaufman and features some entertaining moments; it's not a good film but at least it's tolerable and never boring.

I just have read the fantastic novel in a week and i'm glad our dad picked the movie adaptation ! This karaoke bar opening may be disastrous but i discovered that Crichton has worked on the screenplay. So the movie looks really like the novel but it's more easy to follow, more polished, and above all, it offers new scenes but also new facts about the case and the characters as well! I don't know if Crichton wrote originally with Sean in mind but he's perfect here, as the old wisdom cunning sage (even if it's Giorgio(s suit is awful). However, Snipes has nothing for him : he looks a Jar-Jar, not bright, good for kicks only and that wasn't the liaison agent i followed in the novel.

I have not read the book, so my disappointment is based only on acting.The movie is not bad, but the acting and scenes seem stiff and unnatural. My disappointment is not based on a particular actor - no one in particular is bad - just stiff and boring.nice cultural ping pongbut it don't scratch beneath the surfacethe emotions played in various scenes are played stiff and unnaturalthe tempo is OK, the story is OK, just the acting is boring.more stories is being told (business, cop, private). It keeps the attention of the viewer. But still boring acting.

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.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.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.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.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.