EMPEROR (2013)

Genre: War/Drama
Director: Peter Webber
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Matthew Fox, Eriko Hatsune, Toshiyuki Nishida, Kaori Momoi, Masato Ibu
RunTime: 1 hr 45 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Coarse Language And Violence)
Released By: Cathay-Keris Films & InnoForm Media
Official Website: http://www.emperor-themovie.com

Opening Day: 23 May 2013

Synopsis: A gripping tale of love and honor forged between fierce enemies of war, EMPEROR unfolds the story, inspired by true events, of the bold and secret moves that won the peace in the shadows of post-war Japan. Matthew Fox joins Academy Award winner Tommy Lee Jones and newcomer Eriko Hatsune to bring to life the American occupation of Japan in the perilous and unpredictable days just after Emperor Hirohito's World War II surrender. As General Douglas MacArthur (Jones) suddenly finds himself the de facto ruler of a foreign nation, he assigns an expert in Japanese culture - General Bonner Fellers (Fox), to covertly investigate the looming question hanging over the country: should the Japanese Emperor, worshiped by his people but accused of war crimes, be punished or saved? Caught between the high-wire political intrigue of his urgent mission and his own impassioned search for the mysterious school teacher (Hatsune) who first drew him to Japan, Fellers can be certain only that the tricky subterfuge about to play out will forever change the history of two nations and his heart.

Movie Review:

Tommy Lee Jones is delightfully wry as General Douglas MacArthur, which in case your history is rusty, was the man tasked with rebuilding Japan after World War II.  Aside from that noble mission, he also had another specific purpose – to decide if Emperor Hirohito (Takata rô Kataoka) should stand trial for war crimes, including the bombing of Pearl Harbour in 1941.  Jones does hardass like the back of his hand, so with his signature gruff voice and cornbob pipe, ‘Emperor’ should be a snappy treat.

Unfortunately, as many other commentators have pointed out, Gen MacArthur is but a supporting character in this movie. Instead, the focus is on his military attaché and psychological warfare director General Bonner Fellers (played by ‘Lost’s’ Matthew Fox), whom he assigns to run the assessment.  To be sure, Gen Fellers is like Gen MacArthur a real person in history, but in adapting a novel by Seiro Okamoto, screenwriters David Klass and Vera Blasi instead throw in a Madame Butterfly romance story that for the record is completely fictional.

Here, Gen Fellers gets to a second shot at rekindling his college romance with an exchange student named Aya (Eriko Hatsune) whom he met in the 1930s, with the subplot meant in fact to reinforce the central message at the heart of the film about honour and sacrifice. That is what Fellers is meant to learn as well, which director Peter Webber does a fair job in highlighting the cultural understanding imperative in such circumstances – which one can of course draw parallels to America’s recent imperialist moves in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Despite its good intentions, this fictionalised account is melodramatic and problematic on several counts – most notably, how it tries to prove Fellers’ love for Aya by steering Allied attacks away from where she might be. It also seems to have taken the wind out of what should have been an intriguing procedural, now reduced to methodical interviews that Fellers conducts of Hirohito’s inner circle of Cabinet members, each of which – or at least those who have yet to be driven to suicide – taking turns to reinforce their code of honour and obedience to the Emperor.

The same can be said of the movie, which unlike Webber’s also historically-based ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’, plays it tame.  It lacks as a whole the energy that MacArthur brings to the screen whenever he is on it, or for that matter, the spark that a crucial scene with MacArthur meeting Hirohito possesses.  In contrast to the feral edge that he brought to the villain in ‘Alex Cross’, Fox plays Fellers subdued and by extension bland, and unfortunately, the movie is worse off by placing its focus on his character rather than MacArthur.

At best, ‘Emperor’ qualifies as a handsome period drama, using a combination of meticulous production design with modern digital effects to create an impressive backdrop of a devastated post-war Tokyo. Stuart Dryburgh’s widescreen compositions are beautiful, but underserved by a story that mixes an interesting part of history with a dubious romance that doesn’t do the former any justice.  A movie of which its conclusion is already written in the history books is ultimately as interesting as the characters in them, and let’s just say there is too little of the one which is more fascinating to make this otherwise well-mounted and well-intentioned movie count. 

Movie Rating:

(Too little of Tommy Lee Jones and too much of a fictional romance hampers what could have been an intriguing war drama on an interesting historical chapter)

Review by Gabriel Chong