This is How Movies Should Be Made

Absolutely amazing

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Lester Cole, arguably better known as one of the Holllywood Ten than a screenwriter, wrote this back to back with Objective Burma, which was released in the same year, 1945. Several times recently I've watched, for the first time, films produced fifty or more years ago when clearly both standards and expectations were lower than those that obtain today. For a film starring 'tough guy' James Cagney, there is surprisingly little 'action' in Blood On The Sun so that it plays more like a 'think' piece on Asian politics, a more or less pseudo-Idiot's Delight written by Robert Riskin rather than Robert E. Sherwood. Cagney set it up himself so the 'message' was presumably one he felt both important and worth the telling. By 1945 Sylvia Sydney wasn't working all that much so it's good to get a glimpse of her, whilst Rosemary de Camp is disposed of far too soon. Curio value.

After James Cagney won his Academy Award for Best Actor, he broke free of Warner Bros. and began focusing on what he considered to be art. Cagney's own production company made this wartime thriller, and it is one of his better efforts among his 1940's independent works. Cagney plays an American newspaper reporter living in Japan who crosses wires with the expansionist Japanese government. Cagney's character is fluent in both Japanese and Chinese, and even knows judo. It's refreshing to see a film from the immediate post-war era that doesn't try to simplify the problem of what happened in Japan and Germany with something like - If only these people would start playing baseball, learn to love hot dogs, and be more like Americans, this sort of thing would never have happened.Cagney's character, Nick Condun, has to hide some expansionist Japanese plans from the Japanese government until he can safely get the data to the American embassy. Along the way he finds an ally in half-Chinese Sylvia Sydney's character Iris Hilliard, who becomes Nick's love interest. One thing about the production code you have to understand - interracial love is strictly taboo, so Nick and Iris' love scenes are less than satisfying. At the end of the film they share just the tiniest bit of a kiss.Cagney is always fun to watch whether he's on an unrighteous or righteous tear, so I'd recommend it even if the script could have perhaps been a little more lively to match the energy of the lead actor.

Better known for his portrayal of American Gangsters (Roaring Twenties, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye), Cagney gives a decent performance in this film and at times brings elements of his gangster charm to the character he plays. The film therefore is entertaining for that purpose because it is that element of his style that makes James Cagney so watchable and what made him a legend. The story is not bad, interesting to get into but it is Cagney that makes it all worth watching. Also, the music in this film is really good. It sounds authentic Japanese, with the main theme accompanying most melodramatic scenes, transposed into one key or another. The fight scenes are good for the time bearing in mind the cast. Cagney actually performs a couple of Judo throws in some of them, although during some of the rougher stuff at the end there does appear to be a stunt double in place. Not too many classic quips to remember in this film apart from the very last line in the movie...I give this a 7/10

This is a bit of a crazy movie, not the type of thing that really holds up on its own after the propaganda value has passed the way "Casablanca" and a few of the other early 40s topical films do (Fritz Lang's "Hangmen Also Die" comes to mind as well). James Cagney is the undoubted star of the film, playing an American news editor in pre-war Tokyo with an unhealthy lack of restraint where issues of Japanese militarism come into play. There is a certain document which proposes a Japanese plan for "world domination" that was supposedly written by a certain Tanaka (John Emery), who the crawl at the beginning of the movie informs us was the "Japanese Hitler." There is also a beautiful part-Chinese woman played by Sylvia Sidney, who is a double agent working for China against Japanese interests.It's hard to take a movie seriously where James Cagney is supposed to be a Judo expert, and he beats up a guy who is 2 feet taller than he is. It's one of those very predictable movies where just because there is this really tall guy who talks at one point about Cagney's Judo skills, you know with 99.9999% certainty that the movie will not end before they tussle. It's a bit like Edward Dmytryk's "Behind the Rising Sun" where Robert Ryan beats up a karate expert with his boxing skills. This is just sort of silly jingoism/propaganda stuck in the movie to get audiences hootin' and hollerin'. Definitely worked in 1945, but it all feels a bit silly now considering that Cagney's only Judo move is to throw a guy over his shoulder.It's not a wretched, awful movie; it does take time like most propaganda movies to remind us that there are at least some Japanese who aren't crazed killing maniacs. Well, the one Japanese guy who helps them happens to have a beard and wear very Western-looking clothing, but at least it's something. The entire plot is telegraphed miles in advance. There is very little dramatic resonance. Basically I believe this film will be of interest mostly to hardcore Cagney fans and people who appreciate unintentional humor from seeing old propaganda and mediocre cross-racial performances.