EMPEROR (2013) – The Review

Students, time to put down your textbooks and dash over to the cinema for yet another history lesson. Seems we were just here for an American history lecture from Steven Spielberg’s Oscar winner LINCOLN. This time we’ll explore the world stage (or soundstage) with the new film EMPEROR. The two films have a bit in common besides the involvement of actor Tommy Lee Jones. Both are set at the conclusions of their respective wars. The former close to the end of fighting, the new film occurs after the signatures on the surrender treaty are barely dry. And both films zero in a particular event. Abe’s trying to make sure the thirteenth amendment is passed, while this recent film wants to ascertain the depth of the Japanese emperor’s role in WWII. Treatment of the losing forces are also factors in the respective films. Class, time to jump into the multiplex time machine and visit a very bruised and battered land of the rising sun.

It’s late Summer 1945 and Japan has surrendered to the allied forces. General Douglas MacArthur’s (Jones) staff lands in Tokyo to enforce these terms of surrender and start to help this country get back on its feet. The general is feeling the pressure from Congress back in the states. They want to punish the men responsible for the attack on America in 1941, even going all the way up to the country’s beloved (and thought of as a god)Emperor Hirohito. But MacArthur needs hard evidence before arresting him as a war criminal. He assigns General Bonner Fellers (Matthew Fox) the task of collecting information and giving him a report recommending a course of legal action within ten short days. Fellers is chosen for his knowledge of the country, but others on the staff fear that he may be biased because of a pre-war love affair with a Japanese teacher, a woman Fellers attempts to locate with the aid of his driver/interpreter. A lot is riding on this conflicted man’s shoulders. If he finds the Emperor culpable, his execution as a war criminal could prompt countless native suicides, non-stop rioting (necessitating millions of US soldiers to be stationed there indefinitely), and, perhaps of their highest concern, Japan could go communist. Fellers races to interview the belligerent, unfriendly officials as the clock quickly ticks away.

Featured prominently in the movie poster is Jones as iconic MacArthur which may lead movie goers to believe he dominates the film. Unfortunately it is a supporting role, but Jones is so compelling we keep hoping for him to show up and liven up the proceedings (and boy do they need it), much as he did in LINCOLN. He’s not just mimicking the newsreel image with his big sunglasses and jutting corncob pipe. He’s a man of contradictions. At times thoughtful, compassionate, and wise while also being flamboyant (eager to pose for the photogs), egotistical, spiteful (after a phone call from the president Mac snarls “Liar!”), and politically ambitious. I want to see an entire film about him (no disrespect to Gregory Peck who played him in a screen bio decades ago), but that’s not what EMPEROR focuses on. It’s really the story of the smart, earnest, far less interesting Fellers. The forty-six year-old Fox still seems too boyish to play a general (he still has the lean look from last year’s disaster ALEX CROSS). He barks at subordinates and stands up to an accuser, but he’s often relegated to looking respectfully at his boss and disgraced Japanese officials. After his fine work anchoring TV’s “Lost” for many years, it’s a shame that the film roles have not been up to that level.

Director Peter Webber tries to keep the movie visually interesting, but there’s just so much that can be done with basically an interrogation film. Fox travels from one office to another questioning former officials, usually sharing tea or saki. Most are English subtitled while some native actors speak English with mixed results. Webber tries to break things up with flashbacks of Fellers’s romance with the beautiful Aya, the Japanese student he met in college during 1932. But even the dreamy shots of the two cavorting amongst the bamboo trees slow the film’s momentum even more. The rest of the film Fox walks or drives his jeep through the rubble-filled streets as he chain-smokes countless cartons of Chesterfields. The setting, scenery, and costumes are impressive, but the film feels longer than the deadline for Fellers’s report. The rebuilding of postwar Japan is an interesting story, but this re-telling just fails to really engage viewers. Perhaps if there were fewer interviews and a whole lot more of the always entertaining Mr. Jones. Let’s hope he kept the shades and pipe.

3 Out of 5 Stars