Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

MartinHafer "Gunki Hatemeku Motoni" beings 26 years after WWII has ended. A war widow is STILL trying to piece together what, exactly, happened to her husband. Much of this is because although the military reports he died, they refuse to grant her any sort of pension or recognition that he died honorably. After lots of pressing, she learns that he was executed...but why?! The rest of the film consists of the widow journeying to see four men who survived the war that all know more than the record states. She needs closure and needs to know why he was killed. Unfortunately, talking to these men isn't easy, as they sometimes lie or twist the truth for their own purposes. Only after repeatedly talking to them is she able to finally piece it together. Exactly what happened and why is something you'll need to learn for yourself....as it would ruin the film to discuss the mystery further.Themes that are repeated throughout the film is the utter depravity of many of the Japanese soldiers--specifically the ones stationed around New Guinea. Mass starvation resulted in cannibalism, desertions and executions--not the sort of image you usually have of the Japanese soldier. Usually, they are shown as being irrationally dedicated--often killing themselves in bonzai charges--but here in "Gunki Hatemeku Motoni", this is sort of portrayal is the exception to the rule--mostly it's just inhumanity and awfulness--and little, if any, heroism.The film seeks at least to address two major problems. The most obvious is that war is awful and this war never should have been fought. The other is about militarism, but not in a way you might anticipate. Yes, it attacked the jingoistic folks who started the war, but it also alludes to the post-WWII years when militarism and nationalism were on the rise--and they attempted to both recreate the sort of government that led to WWII as well as to re-write history--as they were nostalgic about 'the good old days'! As I said, this isn't always obvious, but as a history teacher I recognized some of the photos the film shows from the 1950s and 60s--particularly the famous picture of a government official being stabbed to death by one of these nationalists.This film managed to meet its goals well--mostly due to wonderful acting (especially by the widow--but it was good universally). So, even though some of the battle scenes only consisted of photos and sound effects, the acting and writing more than made up for this--plus the actual battle scenes really weren't necessary. However, there is only tiny mistake that I noticed. Late in the film, a down American flyer is executed. His insignia are of the post-WWII Us Air Force--not the WWII era US Army Air Corps (which it should have been). Still, it's a terrific and powerful film.By the way, two other Japanese films that openly portray the depravity and inhumanity endured and perpetrated by the Japanese soldiers in the waning days of WWII are also worth seeing. "Fires on the Plain" and "Burmese Harp" are outstanding in their blunt image of this--and would make a depressing but interesting companion to "Gunki Hatemeku Motoni".

zetes Director Fukasaku is best known for his cult classic Battle Royale, as well as numerous yakuza flicks from the '70s. Under the Flag of the Rising Sun is really the film he should best be known for. He produced it independently, and it's easily his most prestigious and all-around exceptional film. It's a WWII movie, made from the perspective of a quarter century later. Sachiko Hidari stars as a war widow in 1971 who is still trying to get benefits from the government, as well as restore her husband's honor. He was supposedly executed in the waning days of the war, but any further information has disappeared. To find the truth, she begins searching for veterans who may have known her husband. She interviews several witnesses who give her a conflicting story of her husband, but a pretty vivid picture of what it might have been like to be a soldier fighting in the New Guinea front. The film isn't exploitative, but it can be explicitly violent (most of the flashbacks are in black and white up until the violence starts - Fukasaku does not want the audience to be separate from that). Under the Flag of the Rising Sun is one of the most unflinching of all the great Japanese WWII films. You really feel the pain that still exists in the early '70s. The sequences with the war veteran teacher, watching over his students who have grown up after the war and are completely innocent of it, are especially gut-wrenching. I also loved the performance of Noboru Mitani, best known for playing the irresponsible homeless father in Kurosawa's Dodeskaden, who plays a veteran with a dark secret.

chaos-rampant If Japanese war films are snubbed in the West, that's not done on any political grounds. The Japanese are not only the first to condemn the rigid militarism that brought them to the brink of complete destruction following WWII but the only ones to offer that condemnation against Emperor and Generals in such a scathing manner. If you won't find films like this or THE BATTLE OF OKINAWA mentioned in the same lists as their Vietnam-war American counterparts like APOCALYPSE NOW, it has to do with the same cultural reasons that keep Japanese (or French and Italian) crime films in the shadow while Scorsese, Tarantino and their cohorts reap all the glory.And even when the spotlight falls on the individual, the lowly Japanese soldier haphazardly trained in a few weeks time and sent with meager provisions to conquer New Guinea, the Philippines, or Indonesia in the name of the 'Motherland', the focus is not on a heroic celebration of courage and valor because these men where not heroes and what courage they showed in the face of death was instilled in them by the fear of worse things like malaria and malnutrition or even worse, the fear of their superiors executing them for cowardice, but on grim endurance beyond all hope and glory with nothing else to look forward to but returning home to a wartorn devastated country. The chaos squalor and misery of postwar Japan Kinji Fukasaku knows firsthand. It's the place and time he grew up in and the memory of that misery would resurface regularly in his films as a bleak backdrop to the yakuza films through which he became known and for which he never received the acclaim he deserved.This is the greatest success of UNDER THE FLAG OF THE RISING SUN. Not the narrative maze of the script carrying echoes of RASHOMON and even CITIZEN KANE that has the wife of an executed soldier trying to piece together the life and death of her husband in New Guinea through the memories of his surviving comrades and superiors. It's the hopelessness and savagery of men trying to survive like beasts in the jungle, this relived in a booming 1960's modern Japan by the survivors in the form of flashbacks, that sets apart films like this and Kon Ichikawa's FIRES IN THE PLAIN from their American counterparts. Major battle scenes and historic events are in the background, presented in Fukasaku's trademark quick montages using stock photos. It's the day-to-day tragic struggle for survival for which there is no glory to be had that pucks the real punch and it's enough of a punch to make you ignore the problematic script or poor handling of exposition. In the end, one of the survivors living in a garbage-strewn shantytown outside of Tokyo, bemoans not the misery and destruction of postwar Japan but its rapid economic growth that has no room for scarred veterans like him. Vietnam veterans of 30 years later would relate.

Yuto_Zeiram What's the truth,and what does it bring us ? That's the question what carries this movie up to a level of masterpiece. I will not say that this IS a masterpiece since it also has it flaws, but to come to the plot of this movie, it is about a war widow (Sachiko Hidari) which seeks out the ministry of welfare, in order to clear her late husbands name (who was a sergeant in the war)from the name of "desertor". For almost 20 years she is trying to get some answer on her late husbands strange death, and in 1971, when the head of the department of ministry of Welfare changes, she tries it again. (like every year) The man, just like his predecessors, can't clear her husbands name, however feeling sorry for her, gives her a list of 4 names who didn't respond on the inquiry of her husbands death, so she can seek out the truth herself.This is where the problem starts, for all 4 men ( 1 first class private, a corporal, a military police officer, and a 2nd grade lieutenant) tell her 4 different story's about her late husbands death. The only questions is who is right, and who lies, and as last who simply doesn't know. All the men state at first (which is remarkable) that they simply don't recall much from that time, and apart from from that the military records are not complete, so the widow will never have any prove of the story on how her husband died. This is an interesting factor which shows that even in this movie, Japan still can not deal with it's history.Back to the movie itself and the review. Sachiko Hidari who plays the widow does a good job on the leading lady here, for her desperation doesn't seem unreal, however sometimes a little overacted. In my opinion it is Tetsuro Tamba who plays the role of one of the returned soldiers from the war who deserves the most credit. He plays the first soldier (private first class) who lives in a dump, between tramps an beggars, and his image of this soldiers who cannibalized on his fellow soldiers is so haunting that it doesn't leave the mind. After his deed of feeding on their flesh because of starvation, he returns in the slums of Tokyo feeling secure, among the chaos. But when Japan cleans up he feels left behind, he feels still dirty (and guilty) and decides to live among the slums in a back alley ghetto dump (very ironic as a PIG farmer). Of the four war witnesses, he is the strongest representation of the carnage pf chaos of it, but that doesn't mean the other 3 are just loose sand. The power of this picture lies in the story's of these 4 men who will tell you about the horrors of that war.Fukasaku Kinji (Battle Royal, the Geisha House, Fall Guy) has made a very interesting documentary of war, crafted in the form of a motion picture. The film is in color but the flashbacks upon what happened to Sachiko Hidari husband are all in monochrome black and white (except for the strongest shots which switch over into color. Together with some freezing time frames, and b/w picture of the war and holocaust, this picture is trying to make clear that war IS nothing but chaos. Fukasaku's direction is good, however, as said, he is victimizing the wrong group in my eyes. I is understandable as Japanese that he does this, but it doesn't make it right. I don't want to me a moralist, but this is something that Japans just keeps denying (and it affects me for my roots are German, and we confessed to all of the war crimes, but through the incident with the atomic bomb, Japan got away with the victim label) Back to the theme, the pictures of holocaust don't shock anymore, as much as they might have in 1972. (for all those who have seen the war pictures and tapes of Europe from the second world war), but still they leave behind a strong impression on how brutal, and more important how REAL this was. This isn't fiction, it is very much real, and there is still a rather unbelief to what humans are capable of. This films doesn't deny anything from it's image that is inhuman. it shows you the torture (although only of Japanese people, there is only 1 foreigner that get's killed here openly before the camera) of soldiers, the cannibalism, the vermin, the blood lust of officers, the madness, and the chaotic structure. What is left behind are the feeling of fear, you can see it in all the 4 men who are left behind to tell the tale of it.This movie is not an action flick in the sense of "saving private Ryan" or "Pearl Harbour". This is a slow (or more slower) movie that has it's power in the story it has to say. The camera actions (the image)of the picture is not that new or uncommon, but it hits the nerve of the open wound. To be more precise the story fits the image that Fukasaku shows you.What also was a relieve that this picture didn't care much for heroism that Hollywood filmmakers give their pieces a lot of times, no it's shows us how low people can get if it comes to survive. For anyone who goes beyond Hollywood cinema joy, and a nice night at the movies, an interesting piece to watch, and if it was only to hear the story from A. the Japanese side, and B. the hear a second world war tale which isn't about Nazis Europe, Americans or Germans.