“Rising Sun” is the most quickly turned-around Michael Crichton adaptation since “Binary”/ “Pursuit,” with a 1993 film following the 1992 novel. Although it’s by far the less talked-about Crichton film in that year of “Jurassic Park,” it’s a respectable followup in what would become the decade of Crichton adaptations.
Giving away the country?
The novel’s big takeaway is Crichton’s feeling – backed by some economic evidence – that American governmental policies and corporation actions are effectively giving away the USA to the Japanese. The screenplay by Philip Kaufman (who also directs) and Michael Backes mutes this aspect, although it does pepper in tidbits about how Japanese corporations in the USA supply jobs and treat their employees well, whereas many American corporations are moving overseas.
Cutaways to a senator (Ray Wise) discussing his position on international trade laws remind us of the backdrop this murder mystery will play against. Throw in a deep-bass score by Tôru Takemitsu – which, of course, also includes Japanese whistles – and we know the stakes go beyond a regular whodunit.
“Rising Sun” (1993)
Director: Philip Kaufman
Writers: Philip Kaufman, Michael Backes (screenplay); Michael Crichton (novel)
Stars: Sean Connery, Wesley Snipes, Harvey Keitel
The film is slightly more sympathetic to Japan than the novel. But mainly, the movie has a different focus. As it follows the same mystery about a high-class prostitute found dead at a corporate skyscraper party, “Rising Sun” turns into a vehicle for Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes.
These actors pop off the screen in a way the book’s John Connor and Peter Smith (Webster Smith in the film) don’t quite. As with many Crichton characters, they are more defined by their jobs. That’s sometimes OK, especially with Connor, a fount of knowledge about Japanese cultural behavior on individual and corporate levels.
Buddy cops
The actors don’t subsume their characters or the story, but a lot of “Rising Sun’s” pleasure – especially if the plot is fresh in your mind and therefore not surprising – is seeing Connery and Snipes play off each other. I didn’t picture either of them in the roles when reading the book, but they fit perfectly.
Snipes is especially a surprise, because the book’s Smith is either white or undefined, if memory serves. By casting a black actor, Web easily connects with computer wiz Jingo (Tia Carrere, who is Spanish, Chinese and Filipino). Jingo is half-Japanese, half-black, and therefore ostracized in her native Japan.
Additional wrinkles come when the white assistant to the Japanese honcho orders Web to fetch the car, mistaking him for the help; and when the black security guard thinks his “brother” Web will be a sympathetic ear. We also get a subtle connection between Web and mid-level employee and playboy Eddie Sakamura (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, infusing some flavor into the role).
“Rising Sun” looks nice, especially the police home invasion in the rain that leads to a car chase on a slick road. It’s not stylized, but it’s tense. The film is paced well and the Connery-Snipes interplay holds our attention. It only runs off the rails at the very end.
(SPOILERS FOLLOW.)
Bizarre ending (Spoilers)
It had been a while since I read the book, but I remembered the ending that centered on the importance of honor in Japanese culture. The employee who messed up has dishonored the company, so he commits suicide.
In the film, that employee is shunted off to a lower-level job where he’ll play out his career in shame. Meanwhile, someone else is revealed to be the murderer (I think), and he’s killed by the company’s enforcers. So Kaufman and Backes replace the book’s interesting, creepy sense of honor with the more generic notion of a huge corporation that permanently silences troublesome employees.
Additionally, the film reveals that John and Jingo were an item all along, something that makes me want to rewatch the film to look for glances between Connery and Carrere I had missed. It’s a weird twist, though, because the Jingo-Web bond is genuine. And it’s a shame to know Web and Connor are now rivals in a love triangle after finally achieving the “buddy” aspect of the buddy cop structure.
The denouement is awkward enough that I wonder if it was a rewrite for the sake of more action and twists. But overall, “Rising Sun” a gripping procedural with insight into Japanese culture that will appeal to a viewer whether you’ve read the book or not.