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Emperor

✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

Japan, United States · 2012
Rated PG-13 · 1h 45m
Director Peter Webber
Starring Matthew Fox, Tommy Lee Jones, Eriko Hatsune, Masayoshi Haneda
Genre Drama, History, War

As the Japanese surrender at the end of WWII, Gen. Fellers is tasked with deciding if Emperor Hirohito will 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.

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What are critics saying?

25

Slant Magazine by

Peter 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.

40

Time Out by Joshua Rothkopf

Director 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.

50

The Playlist by Kevin Jagernauth

The 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.

30

Village Voice by Nick Schager

Given 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.

67

Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman

Emperor 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?)

75

Observer by Rex Reed

The 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.

67

Tampa Bay Times by Steve Persall

Emperor 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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