Blood on the Sun

Plot synopsis:
Nick Condon (James Cagney) is a journalist for the Tokyo Chronicle. He prints a story disclosing Japan's plan to conquer the world. The newspaper is seized by Japanese officers. Condon gets the Tanaka Plan, a paper in which all the plans are described. The Japanese spies who follow him think that Ollie and Edith Miller (Wallace Ford and Rosemary DeCamp) are the ones who discovered the plan because they suddenly have a lot of money and are coming back to the USA. When Condon goes to the ship to bid them farewell, he finds Edith dead. Hearing someone in the adjoining room, he tries to enter, but the intruder escapes. He has only a glimpse of a woman's hand wearing a ring with a huge ruby. Returning home, he finds Ollie, badly beaten. Ollie gives him the Tanaka plan before dying.
Premier Giichi Tanaka (John Emery) wants his plans to remain secret, and sends Col. Hideki Tojo (Robert Armstrong) Capt. Oshima (John Halloran) and Hijikata (Leonard Strong) to follow him everywhere. Meanwhile, Condon hides the document with the Tanaka plan behind the portrait of Emperor Hirohito in his house.
Condon meets Iris Hilliard (Sylvia Sidney), half American and half Chinese. At first, he suspects her of being the lady in the ship, then he doesn't. They fall in love. She seems to be betraying him, especially when Condon sees the ring with the ruby in her hand.
At the end, it turns out she's been sent by a politician who wants peace and was present when the Tanaka plan was devised. Condon leaves his job after ten days. When he's about to leave Japan, he meets the politician and Iris in the harbor. The politician signs the document to prove it's real. They are discovered by the Japanese army.
Iris runs away with the document in a cargo ship which will take her out of Japan. To distract the Japanese officers, Condon fights his greatest enemy and tries to reach the American Embassy. He's shot at by spies dressed in street clothes, but he's not killed. The consular adviser goes out of the Embassy and takes Condon inside still alive, and the Japanese officers can't prevent it, because they couldn't find the Tanaka document when registering Condon.

Tags: violence, murder

Review:
Jimmy Cagney is like a firecracker in this movie, set in pre-WWII Japan.
The film portrays Japanese opponents of the war as well-meaning but fairly easily countered by ruthless militarists and their secret police which is likely generally accurate.
While the entire world watched the early success of the German book ¨Mein Kampf¨ by Adolph Hitler , few were aware of the existence of an Oriental Hitler...Baron Giichi Tanaka , he was a true life a bad guy who united with rich proprietaries and war lords to further his own ends .
Entertaining Anti-Japanese drama centering on James Cagney as an American editor in 1930's Japan involved in breaking the Japanese plot to invade China and bomb the United States.
Blood on the Sun is a fairly good World War II espionage thriller set in imperial Japan.
Modern audience may perceive the film as being politically incorrect especially since key Japanese roles were played by American and British actors.
James Cagney, as reporter Nick Condon, fights against fascism in this movie and he fought against injustice in so many other films.
Jimmy Cagney plays Nick Condon a fast-talking plain spoken Newspaperman who is soon targeted as a threat to Japanese politicians and is marked to be kidnapped and killed.
American newspaperman in Toyko Nick Condon (James Cagney) valiantly struggles against the dictatorial rule within 1940s Japan hoping to get back to the American public proof of a secret plan made by the Japanese government to attack the United States on a mission of world conquest.
Cagney plays an American newspaper reporter living in Japan who crosses wires with the expansionist Japanese government.
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.
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..
The only reason this film gets as high as a five from me is because of James Cagney who made everything he was in a little bit better or appear to be so.
A lot of people now consider the thing to have been a big old hoax perpetrated by the Chinese who were looking for friends back in 1929 because they rightly suspected Japanese intentions towards them.So Blood in the Sun came out just in time as the belief in the Tanaka Memorial was still credible.The brothers Cagney, William and James, produced this.
Jimmy Cagney played Nick Condon, a reporter who got a copy of the Tanaka Memorial and smuggled it out of Japan.A lot of the cast played Eurasian roles and looked pretty silly too.
This time James Cagney is an American journalist who lives in Tokio and must face to the fascism and stop the Japanese government plans..This film is also pioneer for be the first north American movie in have a martial arts fight in it and I dare to say that also one of the best..Cagney was a judo black belt and he was an amateur boxer, so his fight skills looks pretty good in front of the camera..in my opinion blood on the sun is an underrated film, very enjoyable, with great performances in which the star James Cagney shines in a special light.
Hokey WWII propaganda film with Tokyo-based newspaper man Jimmy Cagney exposing the Japanese duplicity with their relationships with China and the US and their intention for world domination.
In the movie James Cagney who plays a journalist for a Tokyo English paper always condemning against the Japanese political agenda an (evil) propaganda; however it is a movie that meant to be a part of anti-Jap propaganda itself for sure when its time and backdrops are concerned.
The rest of  the cast are either good Americans or bad Japanese.Overall this is a average Cagney thriller.
James Cagney (as Nick Condon) is a reporter in Tokyo; a dutiful, precognizant American, he confronts the increasing grip of Fascism on the Japanese people, during the reign of Tanaka Giichi.
He puts up a fight, acquires a love interest, and so on and so forth.The plot is kind of typical - just so happens to be a spare attractive female lying around for him to pick up along the way, for example - but Cagney makes it work.This isn't on the same level as "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye" or "White Heat" but it's still, for what it is, an entertaining adventure story with Cagney in fine form.Worth seeing if you're a fan of the actor, otherwise, you might wanna give it a miss..
James Cagney goes to Japan in this dated slice of anti-Japanese propaganda which sees the gangster star tackling a government intent on world domination.
With much of the supporting cast made up of American actors "yellowed up" for their roles and a decidedly anti-Japanese sentiment to the storyline and its resolution, it's hard for modern viewers to enjoy this one.Cagney is as good as ever as the crusading reporter aiming to bring to light secret plans by a sinister government, but his role is one of those which could have been played by anybody and he can do little with it.
It is now certain that the letter was not written by Zinovieff, but by anti-Soviet Russians living in exile in France, and that the Tories used it unscrupulously but successfully, to win the election.Similarly we have the "maguffin" of this film: "The Tanaka Memorial".Baron Tanaka was a leading Japanese political figure who supposedly wrote this fanatical piece about the need for Japan to expand in Asia, at the expense of the colonial empires of France, Britain, Holland, and Portugal, and the United States.
It may have been the first time an Asiatic was played as an intelligent (and non-belligerent) human being.Similarly here Cagney (and his brother William, who produced his films and helped choose his properties) are fair to the bulk of the Japanese, who were normal people like ours.
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.
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.
He was even willing to play not particularly likable characters -- his supporting role as Captain Morton in Mister Roberts (1955) is an excellent example, and one of the few really good qualities in an otherwise mediocre film.But he was not particularly subtle or thoughtful or philosophical and his two-fisted, rock-'em, sock-'em approach to dicey international politics in Blood on the Sun (1945) turns what might have been a tale of intrigue about Japanese military ambitions well before Pearl Harbor into ridiculous farce.
It seems to be that obtaining and publicizing a "secret" document outlining Japanese war plans in the mid-1930s or so, will somehow make a big difference in US posture and the progress of WWII after the latter conflict begins four-to-six years later.Observing the friction between the US and Japan over Pacific trade routes in the 1920s, George S.
The notion that the contents of a piece of paper would have made some kind of essential difference must have seemed silly, at best, and patronizing, at worst, not only to the men and women doing the fighting, but also to the men and women whose sons and daughters were being churned up in it.I don't object to period propaganda, but the scenes where Cagney bellows at the Japanese authorities demanding the civil rights he is "entitled" to as an American (regardless of the fact that he is an unwelcome guest in Imperial Japan) are flat out stupid, making his character appear to be a junior-grade moron and not a fearless newspaper editor taking risks to broadcast the truth.
(Which highlights another nonsensical plot device: Japan wants Cagney out and fast, so they give him TEN DAYS to mess around before he has to leave!)This ridiculous approach is maintained in just about every engagement, culminating in Cagney toppling an opponent about twice his size with his bare hands, eluding multiple enemy agents, getting slightly (but heroically) wounded, and surviving to be enfolded in the embrace of the light shining from the front windows of the US embassy which, along with the formidable presence of embassy official Hugh Beaumont, is more than enough to keep a few dozen vicious, sneaky evildoers at bay.As silly as the notion that without British assistance the Japanese didn't know how to build a bridge, but unlike David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), it is not a good movie in pretty much any respect.Produced by James' brother William, if you look at it right, I suppose this well-intentioned family project might contain a laugh or two but really is -- and always was -- just unworthy of both Cagney and its subject.XYZ.
(which in no way is related to X-Men!)Talking to a friend recently,I discovered that he was interested in seeing Cagney's non-gangster titles,which led to me deciding that it would be a good time to see Cagney cover the sun with blood.The plot:Being credited as the editor who saved the paper from folding,Tokyo Chronicle editor Nick Condon begins to suspect that he may have just grabbed the story of the decade,thanks to an informant giving him a document titled "The Tanaka Memorial",which contain details about Japan's planned invasions for world domination.With having enjoyed a high amount of press freedom whilst working at the paper,Condon begins to suspect that he may have gotten hold of something very important,due to a number of police officers and politician's suddenly becoming extremely aggressive towards the paper.Fearing that he and Chronicle are at increasing risk of being permanently shut down,Condon rushes to publish the story,as he begins to find out how far the police,army and politician's are willing to go to keep the document out of the public's eye.View on the film:Made just as WWII was coming to an end,and also just before questions about the real Tanaka Memorial began to get raised, (with the document now being seen as a fake,designed to get the Alieies on the side of China's Communist party,which it succeeded in doing) the screenplay by Lester Cole,Frank Melford,Garrett Fort and Nathaniel Curtis initially make the movie appear that it is going to take a close look at the blurred lines separating the government and the press.Sadly,despite director Frank Lloyd and art directors A.Roland Fields and Wiard Ihnen, (who would both win an Oscar for their work in the title) covering the movie with tense darken alleyways and low-lit lighting,the screenplay burns out after the first 30 minutes,with the exciting espionage moments in the film being drained of their energy by the writer's jumbling them up,instead of allowing each double cross/close escape to twist naturally.Being filmed as his second feature to be from his own production company,James Cagney gives a rattling performance as Nick Condon,with Cagney showing Condon gradually becoming increasingly distrusting of all those around him as he gets closer to hitting the dead line.Along with Condon using his quick-wit to out smart the dark forces at power,Cagney also displays a surprising skill for excellent stunt work,thanks to the movie featuring a number of great,rough'n' tumble judo battles,all of which are not performed by a stunt person,but are in fact done by Cagney himself (something which Cagney would continue training with,long after the movie had been completed),which leads to this blood stained sun being one that wont fully fade out into a total eclipse..
The film doesn't get high marks as part of Cagney's body of work, but I found it to be a fairly gripping pre-War espionage thriller, and all the while you anticipate his character getting captured or knocked off.
As managing editor of the Tokyo Chronicle, Nick Condon (Cagney) sets the wheels in motion for a host of Japanese villains to re-secure the document, at the same time attempting to define the true nature of an effective double agent, Iris Hilliard (Sylvia Sydney).If you've seen enough films of the era, you won't be surprised by the lack of Orientals portraying Japanese characters, even Charlie Chan was played by non-Asians.
I can't recall now whether Cagney's training was just for the film or if it reflected an interest in the discipline itself.It's probably best that the story ends as it does, without Nick and Iris making a successful getaway together.
Set in 1920s Japan James Cagney plays newspaperman Nick Condon.
He has offended the Japanese authorities by publishing an article suggesting that Japan has plans to attack China and ultimately the United States and when he is given a document, which implicates Premier Tanaka and his underling Colonel Tojo, that seems to prove this his life is in danger; two people have already died while trying to get it out of the country.
James Cagney does a solid enough job as Condon and Sylvia Sidney was okay as Iris although she didn't look half Chinese and romance between her and Cagney isn't the most believable on screen.
Cagney gets a few nice action sequences and gets to show his athletic prowess with judo, but other than that, the film really isn't worth your time..
The girl got away with the Tanaka Document and turned it in to American officials, they were prepared for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and therefore it was prevented, the United States never entered World War II, and the last 60 years of history didn't happen?
It was made in Hollywood about Japan, and it was released in 1945, and it marks a return to film after a 4 year hiatus for Sylvia Sidney.I would open by calling this movie moderately racist.
American newspaperman Nick Condon (James Cagney) who is based in Tokyo sets out to expose the imperial plans of a faction of the Japanese government prior to outbreak of WWII.
The document supposedly outlined a plan to conquer China and eventually the United States.Condon who has already been critical of the militarist faction in the Japanese government comes into possession of the Tanaka document but before he can expose its contents he needs to get out of Japan though the authorities are watching him very closely.
The Japanese characters for the most part are thinly sketched and include historical figures such as Giichi Tanaka and Hideki Tojo.James Cagney is moderately successful in his role and Sylvia Sidney is adequate but neither they nor the capable supporting cast deliver any memorable performances.
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.
A beautiful spy becomes his friend.*Special Stars- James Cagney, Sylvia Sidney, John Halloran *Theme- Americans are always on the side of truth and fair play.*Trivia/location/goofs- Vintage Warner Brothers studio movie supporting the war effort.
Plot loosely based on a real event in the 20's called the Tanaka Memorandum.*Emotion- An enjoyable but rather 'dated' war film with raucous, irreverent all American tough-guy newspaper reporter and investigative journalist played by Jimmy Cagney.
(Some Spoilers) Far out movie about an American reporter Nick Condon, James Cagney, getting the scoop on a secret Japanese plan to take over the world single-handedly.
This, the story takes place in 1929, without the help of it's later war-time ally the almost invincible Nazi Germany which didn't come into existence until some four years later.With the Imperial Japanese Government getting wind of Condon's intentions of exposing their mad plan of world conquest they start to work on him in order totally descried Nick in the eyes of of the non-aligned, with Japan, world.
Quickly going into action the Japanese secret, or thought control, police first murder Nick's fellow American newsman Ollie Miller (Wallace Ford), who actually had the secret plans of Japan's intentions of conquering the world on him, and his wife Edith, Rosemary DeCamp.
And that person is as close to the naive and a bit gullible Nick as well as he, or she, is to the head of a group of rouge Japanese military officers who's planning to take, without the knowledge of the Emperor, over the country in a military coupe: The scheming and murderous Col. Hideki Tojo, Robert Armstrong.Extremely complicated film with Nick Condon getting out of one jam after another with him finally getting the goods, the secret document, out of Japan with a little help from his friends.
To the relief of the Japanese Nick didn't have the secret document of the intentions of their planned world conquest on him.