Emperor
starring Matthew Fox, Tommy Lee Jones, Eriko Hatsune and Takataro Kataoka
screenplay by Vera Blasi and David Klass
directed by Peter Webber
Rating: ♦♦◊◊◊
Based on the book by Shiro Okamoto, Emperor features U.S. Gen. Bonner F. Fellers at the close of World War II investigating Japanese Emperor Hirohito to decide if he should be hanged as a war criminal. Influencing his ruling is his quest to find Aya, an exchange student he met years earlier in the U.S.
This was not nearly as good as I hoped it would be or as it ought to have been. It was kind of slow, really, and boring. I fell asleep. Ironically I watched it on the airplane on the way back to Japan from my summer holiday in Canada on the anniversary of the Nagasaki atomic bombing. From previews of the film I thought it was going to be about the megalomania of Gen. Douglas McArthur. That would have been a better and more interesting treatment of the Èmperor theme. McArthur thought he was one. But no.