Review of Under the Blood-Red Sun

Terrific performances from veteran local and mainland actors Tashima, Ogawa, Seki and Kahele. Admittedly, it feels at times their pidgin English is sometimes compromised. "Like dat" instead of "li'dat." But this film dramatizes a historically important event, from a unique perspective, that of a Japanese American child. Though I would have liked to have seen him become more rebellious, and experience the consequences of his actions, his character arc was weakened because of this. Further, it appears that there were no consequences to his actions. I would have liked to see him put through the ringer more.

I wasn't crazy about the child actors, especially the "cutesy" JA girls, who were only there for window dressing. My own experience with child actors in Hawaii is that they can't seem to get out of their musical theater training. Ki Sakamoto is believable and improves as the film progresses, but the script was weak and felt like a foreigner's perspective.

I could nitpick on odd inconsistencies, like Kahele's character telling the family not to speak Japanese when they never do in the first place. Or the boys that don't contribute much to the story and don't even play baseball.

You can tell which kids were raised not to speak pidgin.

But overall, what Tim Savage and D.P. Shawn Hiatt can do in re-creating 1941 Hawaii without a multi-million dollar budget was very impressive.