132: Rising Sun (with Aden Jordan) (Patreon)

I’m joined by Aden Jordan, a grant writer based in Southern California and patron of the podcast, to discuss Philip Kaufman’s 1993 deeply strange and lurid murder mystery Rising Sun, based on the bestseller by Michael Crichton, starring Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes as special agents brought in to investigate the murder of a sex worker at a Japanese corporation based in Los Angeles on the eve of its acquisition of an American microchip firm.

Although based on a novel that also served as Crichton’s jeremiad about the danger to the United States posed by Japan’s dominance over the world economy and American real estate, Kaufman complicated matters (and alienated Crichton from the project) by pushing against the source material’s agenda, most notably by casting a black movie star as the protagonist and giving the most racist dialogue to the most unpleasant characters (with an uncredited script polish by David Mamet). But Kaufman makes his own mistakes in terms of tempering the film’s racial politics.

Rising Sun is a complex text that still speaks to contemporary concerns: its depiction of the surveillance state, American Anti-Asian paranoia in the culture, and manipulation of the truth through digital trickery. But it’s also a very bizarre exercise in style, an Ambient Noir where vibes and postmodern touches clash against the plot and intentions of the source material and perhaps indicate the director’s true feelings for the project.

Trailer for Rising Sun (Philip Kaufman, 1993)

Jonathan Rosenbaum’s review of Rising Sun for the Chicago Reader, August 13, 1993

“When Simple Isn’t Good Enough: Director Philip Kaufman is once again the center of a storm with his adaptation of Michael Crichton’s bestseller Rising Sun” by Gene Seymour, for the Los Angeles Times, July 25, 1993

“His Jurassic World: Author Michael Crichton’s Entertainment Odyssey and Lasting Cultural Impact” by Michael Weinrib, for Grantland, June 11, 2015