Good concept, poorly executed.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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.

A woman is found dead in a Japanese company offices in L.A. Police detective Tom Graham (Harvey Keitel) investigates. Web Smith (Wesley Snipes) is called in but he's told to bring John Connor (Sean Connery) along. He's a former police Captain and Japanese expert. The woman is a professional escort who dies during rough sex. Senator John Morton (Ray Wise) opposes a deal with the Japanese. Connor receives the surveillance footage of the murder implicating Eddie Sakamura (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) but it's been digitally altered.The plot is a little too complicated with hidden agendas. The Japanese sensibility was interesting at the time. It would be better if the plot has fewer twists and a bit more clarity. Connery and Snipes don't really have good chemistry. It may also be better if Smith is more of a greenhorn. That chemistry would probably be more compelling.

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.

I watch this kind of movie for fun and suspend my disbelief.Rising Sun is not bad at all. It could have been much worse without Connery. I am not a big fan of oriental "wisdom" sound bites e.g. "Leave the cage door open the bird may return". Spoken by an unintelligent actor you don't like they become a lightening rod for all your ire. Fortunately Connery is not such an actor.The senior Japanese executives look like they have irritable bowel syndrome if they smiled their faces would crack. It is exaggerated and silly but for the most part the action keeps your interest. Although, at the end I got confused as to who killed the girl. I am still not sure.It is worth renting to pass a couple hours.