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Blood on the SunRating:
Release Date: 19 February, 2002 Retail Price: $7.98 OUR Price: $7.98 You SAVE: $0.00! Cast: Complete Cast (11 total) |
Blood on the Sun Reviews
Maybe You Have to Live It to Appreciate It
In "Blood on the Sun," James Cagney plays an expat newspaper editor who discovers Japan's plot for world domination. Made in 1945, the film is a bully piece of wartime propaganda--but it also has surprising depth. It isn't PC, but it's not all stereotype either. There are some real Asians in the film, the plot is a true story, and not all the Japanese are evil. That said, yes, there are a lot of quasi-offensive squinty-eyed caucasians with fake buck teeth in the film, too.
Cagney does a very good job as the editor. A bundle of self-assured energy, as ever, he nonetheless adds depth by trying to speak a bit of Japanese and Mandarin, and by doing some very credible judo. Matter of fact, his judo coach was LAPD's Jack Halloran, who also took a role in this flick and went on to become a regular Hollywood character actor!
The movie is filmed almost entirely in sets at the studio, which is unsurprising. Nevertheless, it looks fairly good. In fact, the "expat bar" set is a faithful reproduction of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed bar at the old Imperial Hotel in Tokyo!
Cagney was just coming off an Oscar and just out of contract with WB Studios. Here, he and his brother produced, and they did a decent job. In short, the films hold up. Not a major classic, but an exciting potboiler! And as a correction to various reviewers, the film takes place neither in "post-WWII Japan" nor "The 1920's" but in the 30's.
As a personal aside, I served many years as a US diplomat in Communist China--another ruthless east Asian dictatorship. Maybe some other viewers will find the Jpaanese officials in Blood on the Sun to be too fake, smarmy, and banal. I found them pretty realistic!
Post WW2 anti-Japanese flick
The pugnacious James Cagney stars in this very heavily propagandized 1945 flick "Blood on the Sun". Cagney plays Nick Condon the feisty and successful newspaper editor of the Tokyo Chronicle in the 1930's. Cagney receives a document spelling out the militaristic intentions of Japan formulated by Baron Tanaka. The plan calls for the conquering of China as the initial step towards world domination.
When Cagney's top reporter and wife are murdered by the Japanese secret police, he realizes his own life is in danger. With the aid of the exotic looking Sylvia Sidney, playing a Eurasian Chinese sympathizer and double agent, he endeavors to deliver the document to the American embassy in Japan.
The movie amateurishly portrayed the Japanese, who were heavily made up Caucasians, stereotypically as nearsighted, bespectacled, bucktoothed yellow demons. I suppose the world climate at the time demanded this type of treatment to our hated enemies by Hollywood. It was a bit too thick for me however
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