The occasionally promising “Sunrise” is rendered worthless and boring by the cliched and stereotypical dialogues as well as the wooden portrayal of the characters. One feels a large degree of disappointment since the film should evoke the graphical ferocity and remind one of the finest vampire movies, “Near Dark.” Hate thrives in places where it is under-regulated, and not all adversities are magical in nature. The interesting aspects of “Sunrise,” however, employ the latter concept more creatively, even implying that more human figures like racists and bullies are worse than vampires. The narrative in the movie dogs the life of a fascist and the horrific violence he pours down upon a single immigrant family while wrapping an unlikeable vampire story around it. While a host of outsiders were once welcomed into a specific community, the film indeed tries to pull the threads associated with that but fails to leave a substantial impact. This film employs a seriousness and worry which is not often found in most movies but unfortunately it feels flat because the ideas were simply uninteresting.
It is remarkable how consistently good an actor Pearce is across any genre and in particular, he sinks his teeth (get it?) into the character of Reynolds, a man who is introduced with the most colorful of language and a barrage of racial slurs. In one of his better scenes, he passionately delineates how men had to plough the land and fight for it. Pearce easily captures the essence of vile villains who exude depression and are ever complaining, along with the character who captures ‘white privilege’ and believes that he can take whatever he wants. This character is expansively racist and aggressive, but also somewhat sorry for himself, and it is these aspects of Reynolds, who wants to ‘make America great again’ precisely because it does not cater for men like him that Pearce captures beautifully.
Definitely, there are people like Reynolds who dislike the existence of an immigrant family residing in that area, that is Loi, and the very first scene focuses on this animosity between his family towards the Lois, portraying the antagonist spitting venomous words to the head of the family, Chike Chan. His son Edward William Gao is the one who gets picked on in school. The parents: Edward’s mother Yan Crystal Yu is fighting to make ends meet. They finish looking after maybe the most tortured soul that cinema has seen in a long time in Fallon Alex Pettyfer, who is actually a vengeful night dweller seeking revenge on the Reynolds. Tetsuya peels himself off the floor, takes a cigarette from his mouth and tells Pettyfer “you made me suffer for far too long” which might be the only time Pettyfer has any actual on screen action.
The film “Sunrise” is this poorly constructed pacing piece that I snapped to attention when I realized it was going to end. Only one performance stands out however the movie lacks any pretext for such petty audience engagement as it is completely thematically and narratively incoherent. (As if the whole movie didn’t already fall apart due to the excessive glow of lights and absolute deficit of the sort of three dimensionality the genre picture requires in order to function). It is a film where there are so many unfulfilled concepts and is quite often like a long film out of a short screenplay. It’s a movie that in all honesty, stretches its time to its last scene.
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