jmaruyama Review of The Man Who Stole the Sun

The Man Who Stole the Sun (1979)

A counterculture movie with a preposterous plot...

[5/10 · 21 February 2006]

Hasegawa Kazuhiko's "Taiyo O Nusunda Otoko" (AKA The Man Who Stole The Sun) is an odd film which seems a bit out-of-place as a late 1970's movie. Its counterculture, anti-authority/anti-establishment themes which may have been in good company with early 70's movies like "Serpico","Easy Rider" and "The Deer Hunter" seems somewhat late in coming for a film that was released in 1979. Sawada Kenji has made a career of playing edgy, hippie-like characters who are idealistic to a fault and who end up dying for a cause. His youthful rebel characters are almost as indelible as Matsuda Yusaku's similar characters in the movies. There are a lot of things that make this movie a bit hard to swallow in the credibility department. Can one seriously believe for one minute that Sawada's character Kido Masato, a high school Physics teacher, has the necessary skills and abilities to infiltrate a Japanese Nuclear plant, steal nuclear grade Plutonium, fashion a crude "dirty bomb" and escape capture numerous times from the Police? I also found the ending almost too ridiculous for words. How can Kido survive a major car crash and then a fall from the top of tall building? Sagawara Bunta's dedicated police inspector Yamashita is your atypical police movie standard but Sagawara's usual tough guy intensity is nice to see. I really wanted to see him capture Kido but then again the tone of the movie screamed out that the "villain" would win. I didn't really know what director Hasegawa was trying to get at. Are we supposed to support Sawada's character in his quest to blowup Tokyo? We weren't really given any reasons for his actions. My guess is that he just wanted to "stick it to the man" but this really isn't made very clear. Quite an odd and disturbing movie especially given what's happening in the world now.