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67Emperor explores the delicate postwar dance of revenge, justice, and realpolitik, yet its focus on the issue of Hirohito's guilt or innocence (did he order the attack on Pearl Harbor? Or did he, in fact, oppose the Japanese military machine?)
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50“Let’s show ’em some good old-fashioned American swagger,’’ MacArthur says on his arrival in Tokyo. It’s too bad director Webber and the screenwriters, David Klass and Vera Blasi, didn’t take his advice to heart instead of largely wasting Jones and some very nice period details.
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63Only near the end, when MacArthur and Hirohito meet in person, do we get fireworks. And that's thanks to Jones, who makes sure this old soldier will never die in our memory. As for this tepid movie, it just fades away.
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75In the end, probably the best way to watch Emperor is to pretend that the Supreme Command of Allied Forces in Japan after World War II was Tommy Lee Jones. If you do that, the movie works surprisingly well.
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40Mr. Jones’s performance is the only spark within this otherwise dull, well-mannered exercise.
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63Some of the film's most illuminating scenes involve Aya's uncle, General Kajima (Toshiyuki Nishida), who schools Fellers on the sense of duty that is ingrained in Japanese culture.
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50This one's likely to vex both history buffs and those who require some drama with their drama.
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50Aside from Jones’s broadly entertaining performance as the egotistical Supreme Commander, the movie, directed by Peter Webber (The Girl with the Pearl Earring), is a dud.
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50Emperor may not be the most dazzling of history lessons, but it never treats the past as a dusty, deserted place.
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40Director Peter Webber (“Girl With a Pearl Earring”) fills the film with conciliatory emotion and jarring vistas of post-atomic landscapes. Unfortunately, Emperor needs more good ol’-fashioned swagger.
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63This true-ish story adds a romantic subplot to the prosecution of Japanese war criminals by American general Douglas MacArthur, but neither the love nor the war are completely baked.
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40Director Peter Webber, who once mined social unease from the painterly "Girl with a Pearl Earring," is out of his depth; this is a movie in desperate need of a no-nonsense Howard Hawks.
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20There's really nothing definitive about Emperor. Or memorable, for that matter.
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60There’s far too little of MacArthur’s strutting on display. Granted, that’s not the movie Webber was making. But you kind of wish it was.
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42It's almost too bad, then, that MacArthur and Jones take a back seat to the far less interesting Gen. Bonner Fellers in the stolid drama Emperor.
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40The war crimes and romance stories theoretically run on parallel tracks, but the overall pacing is ragged and the dialogue frequently out of step with the characters we've met.
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67Emperor is also one of those movies in which the most intriguing occurrences are revealed by "what-happened-to . . ." title cards at the finale.
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75The real star of the film is the magnetic, forceful and charismatic Matthew Fox, who steals the entire film as easily as if he were pitching a softball.
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30Given its true-life basis, the story is already devoid of suspense regarding Hirohito’s ultimate fate, and Fellers’s inquiry is made more sluggish by dramatically inert conversations with Japanese officials.
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63Tommy Lee Jones gives us a saltier version of MacArthur than the image-conscious general ever let on to.
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50When MacArthur stands side by side with Hirohito (Takatarô Kataoka), it’s the ultimate in victor-vanquished encounters. That’s also true whenever Jones shares a scene with Fox.
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40Emperor’s bloodless presentation fails on a fundamental dramatic level, playing like the fancy version of a junior-high educational filmstrip, down to the false suspense of Alex Heffes’ corny ticking-clock score.
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50The movie is never without forward momentum, it's just too bad when just when it's ready to go to interesting places, we jump back to Bonner and Aya's pedestrian romance.
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Mar 13, 201358Since Hirohito remained in ceremonial power until his death in 1989, there’s no suspense about the outcome. Instead, the film offers a labored treatise on the Japanese national character, with endless speeches about honor, devotion, loyalty, and the people’s reverence for their emperor as a human deity.
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Mar 8, 201340So it seems like the next logical step in telling a story with a relationship to truth might be that if you're going to fudge things, at least make it entertaining. Please, pull an "Argo."
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Mar 8, 201363This drama is serious and well made but will appeal primarily to those with an interest in the devastated setting (1945 Tokyo) and the enigmatic title character (Emperor Hirohito).
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Mar 6, 201367The film bites off much more than it can chew, raising far more issues and personalities than it can successfully weave into one overall narrative.
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Mar 6, 201375As is the case with most of the elements in Emperor, the cliches are relatively few and spaced apart, and the tearjerking and profound moments are authentic and well-earned.
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Mar 2, 201325Peter Webber's historical drama is blunt about its stylistic ambitions while at the same time failing to meet them, and the effect is one of sad ineffectuality.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 1 out of 3
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Mixed: 1 out of 3
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Negative: 1 out of 3
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Good perforances but not much else can be sad about The Emperor.