Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Rexanne It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

WILLIAM FLANIGAN UNDER THE FLAG OF THE RISING SUN / UNDER THE FLUTTERING MILITARY FLAG / TO RETURN TO THE FLUTTERING BATTLE FLAG (LIT.) (GUNKI HATAMEKU MOTONI). Viewed on DVD. Restoration/preservation = ten (10) stars; editing = eight (8) stars; subtitles = seven (7) stars; cinematography = five (5) stars. Director Kinji Fukasaku re-images a collection of documented/rumored war crimes/atrocities (based on a book of the same name) committed (and covered up) by the Japanese army against itself and punctuated by vivid/disturbing black and white (B&W) photographs of mostly unknown origin/authenticity. Fukasaku employs a clever plot device (of a lonely war widow's 26-year search for the truth about her husband's death) to dramatize military events that may or may not have occurred (there are many twists and turns plus a surprise ending), the power of post-war politics (as practiced by former military officers), and the lasting impact of war on veterans such as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and being left behind as the nation moves on (sound familiar?). The Director made his movie when yet another war (in Vietnam) was in full swing which he often references albeit indirectly. Actors are regularly give free reign to go to extremes so that Fukasaku can triple underline his anti-war stance (these performances often come across as simply silly). Lead actress Sachiko Hidari is a standout not only due to her plum role (as the truth-searching widow), but also her ability to portray an unsophisticated-but-stubborn village widow using a down-home dialect and keeping a slight smile even when delivering lines of serious dialog. Actress Sanae Nakahara is also excellent as the philandering wife of a veteran who only learns about her husband's (fabricated) war activities when Hidari's character pays a visit (Nakahare can change the nature/substance of her performances on a proverbial dime!). Cinematography (2.35 : 1, color, B&W) is uneven with many exterior shots suffering from hand-held camera artifacts and an overall graininess (to better blend with stock footage and photographs?). Editing is outstanding as the film smoothly moves back and forth between color and B&W, and from moving images to photographs. Music is inconsequential and virtually "invisible." Subtitles are fine. The condition of the original source material is outstanding. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

timmy_501 This is about a woman's quest to find out the truth about her husband Togashi's WWII execution over twenty years after the fact. After spending those twenty years attempting to get answers from bureaucrats, she finally finds some who have some empathy and give her a list of names of people that served with him. She travels to see these people and we see what kind of lives the soldiers returned to. First there's her encounter with a man who lives in what appears to be a mountain of garbage. He tells her that her husband was a great man, a hero who he owes his life to. This man tells her that Togashi wasn't executed at all, that he had to have died in battle. He is unwilling to tell the authorities this story, explaining that he doesn't like to be around people and he hasn't been to a city in years.Naturally she isn't satisfied, part of the reason she wants to find out about her husband's death is to have his name cleared so he'll get the same recognition as other people who died in the war. The next man, a comedic actor who stars in farces about the war, tells her Togashi was executed for stealing a potato from a farmer. The film continues on this way as Togashi's wife gets a different story from every man she encounters. Her journey leads her to people of various social standings including a blind man with an adulterous waitress for a wife, a leftist professor, and a retired public official. Each encounter brings her nearer the truth and gives her a greater understanding of the war experience. She begins to see how terrible it was for all involved and she begins to realize that nobody ever really recovers from it; in other words, a government's recognition of the death of a person it forced to go to war and essentially killed is completely worthless, especially when the government literally executes that person.Fukasaku's film is well plotted and it has a precisely executed theme. Further, the visuals are often impressively delivered. The editing is top notch, particularly in the scenes that suggest the main character's interior state. There's also some impressively handled "new wave" experimental techniques such as still frames and color filters. This film's style called to mind the work of more well known Japanese film-makers of the era such as Nagisa Oshima and Shohei Imamura while still remaining an original, personal work for Fukasaku.

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.

gatsby06 If you are thinking of watching this, you need to know what your are getting into first. This is a violent movie, in the extreme.I do not ordinarily watch violent movies. But I am glad I watched this one, even though I had to turn away a few times. The subject matter is about violence, and the director pulls no punches.It is so easy to romanticize war, either in victory or defeat. This movie clearly has a message for the Japanese people about WWII that the director intends them never to forget. That it was received so well, speaks well of the Japanese people's honesty. And it has a message for her Asian neighbors who suffered at the hands of Japanese soldiers, that perhaps hate is no longer appropriate.Viewing it as an American, I was struck by how different the image is from that of the well-disciplined soldier presented almost as a polite stereotype in Hollywood movies. An American director could not have gotten away with such a movie. However, I can't help wondering if this is perhaps not exactly a representative view of what Japanese soldiers went through.The movie is told very effectively through its plot, following the inquiries of the war widow into the death of her husband. As the truth comes out, it hits you in the gut much as it would have hit this widow.At the same time, the director apparently did not intend for this film to be viewed too narrowly as an antiwar movie. It is not just about war, and it is not just about Japanese soldiers, it is about human beings, and what any of us might do in similar circumstances.