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.
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.