Emperor mixes fact with fiction and introduces a clichéd love story subplot which detracts from the film.
The film follows US Army Brigadier General Bonner Frank Fellers (Matthew Fox) who spent time in Japan before the outbreak of the war and ordered by General Douglas MacArthur (Tommy Lee Jones) to decide whether Emperor Hirohito regarded as a living god by the Japanese should be tried and hung as a war criminal. In the mean time the US Forces are rounding up the guilty men who were in power in Japan when it allied itself with the Germans.
Mixed with this interesting aspect of the plot is a dull romance angle of trying to find a Japanese student he fell in love with in a messed up post war Japan which has just been nuked.
The machinations and politicking regarding whether the Emperor should be tried is fascinating and helped by a broad, brash performance by Lee Jones.
Matthew Fox though is rather hindered by the script which fails to make his character interesting because of the fictionalized part of the story. The subplot introduces characters in flashbacks that explains why Japan is the country it is to help us understand why it did what it did in the war.
It is a shame that the film dilutes a momentous story to make it rather anodyne.
The film follows US Army Brigadier General Bonner Frank Fellers (Matthew Fox) who spent time in Japan before the outbreak of the war and ordered by General Douglas MacArthur (Tommy Lee Jones) to decide whether Emperor Hirohito regarded as a living god by the Japanese should be tried and hung as a war criminal. In the mean time the US Forces are rounding up the guilty men who were in power in Japan when it allied itself with the Germans.
Mixed with this interesting aspect of the plot is a dull romance angle of trying to find a Japanese student he fell in love with in a messed up post war Japan which has just been nuked.
The machinations and politicking regarding whether the Emperor should be tried is fascinating and helped by a broad, brash performance by Lee Jones.
Matthew Fox though is rather hindered by the script which fails to make his character interesting because of the fictionalized part of the story. The subplot introduces characters in flashbacks that explains why Japan is the country it is to help us understand why it did what it did in the war.
It is a shame that the film dilutes a momentous story to make it rather anodyne.