AllMovie

Director Edward Dmytryk tried with Behind The Rising Sun to do with then-recent Japanese history what he had previously done in Hitler's Children (1942) -- try to explain to a mass audience, locked in the middle of World War II, some of the history behind the enemy's arrival in that position. In this case, as with his earlier film, the script focuses on a younger Japanese man, Toru Seki (Tom Neal, looking ridiculous in "Asian" make-up), who is very much westernized but succumbs to the militarism and barbarity around him. The mere fact that pre-war Japanese society is depicted as having dedicated liberals and men of peace is astonishing to see in a Hollywood film of this vintage -- though it makes the point that most of these people were killed or driven from power long before the attack on Pearl Harbor. There are some aspects of this picture that do seem ridiculous today, starting with the casting of European actors in the lead Japanese roles, but this movie remains interesting and even provocative, especially in the character portrayed by J. Carroll Naish -- as a well-to-do Japanese man, he may seem on the edge of absurdity at times (though he fares better in his make-up than Neal does in his), but he brings a great deal of humanity to his role, which becomes very affecting as the movie progresses.