No Swagger

I saw Emperor two or three weeks ago. I forget when. Actually I haven’t forgotten. I saw at on Wednesday, 2.20 at the Post Group screening room on Cahuenga. And I tried to tap out a review three or four times, and every time my forearms felt like concrete and my six typing fingers felt like iron — they weighed 10 pounds each. The mere thought of reviewing Emperor made me get out the vacuum and then wash the dishes and then drive down to Gelson’s.

It’s a conservative…make that a stodgy period film. Blah blah blah blah blah. With a half-interesting…make that rote performance by Tommy Lee Jones as Gen. Douglas MacArthur, doing the old lazy bark and smoking the corncob pipe. The best summary I’ve read came from Newark Star Ledger critic Stephen Whitty, to wit: “This is just a dull procedural, with the bland Matthew Fox driving around in a jeep in post-World War II Tokyo and asking questions of various government figures and not having them answered (when he’s not having perfectly cliched flashbacks to a fictionalized romance with a rich Japanese girl).”

That’s it. That’s all it is. Emperor is so dull it’s not even an airplane movie. It’s not a what-the-hell-there’s-nothing-else to watch Netflix or Amazon or Hulu movie for a Monday or a Tuesday evening. Uh-oh, I’m starting to feel sleepy again. My fingers are getting heavier and heavier. Okay, that’s all.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/emperor_2012/

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  • George Prager

    Hard to believe that this is going to be in theaters and that it stars an American. Should’ve been a TNT movie with Tom Wilkinson and Brendan Fraser.

    • Actually

      TNT? Not even that- this screamed History Channel to me.

  • zantetsupowaa

    https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Tommy+lee+jones+alien&oq=Tommy+lee+jones+alien&gs_l=youtube.3..0l7.2674.5121.0.5309.21.20.0.1.1.1.185.1563.14j6.20.0…0.0…1ac.1.NDw5DqyHB8M

  • Edward Klein

    One of your classic reviews. Sounds abysmal.

  • ToddD

    Wells, did you ever see The Sun? I don’t know the focus of this Jones joint, but it features MacArthur in a supporting role to Hirohito at the end of the war. Although Sokurov is tedious, it’s an interesting look at a powerful man who knows the jig is up and the end is near. The banality of the supposedly omniscient master.

    • Noiresque

      The Sun is what makes made me love Sokurov. Though it’s a shame he couldn’t get TLJ to cameo in that film instead of this one; the actor playing MacArthur in The Sun was awful, an obvious amateur.

  • jermsguy

    Looked like a remake of Tora Tora Tora. Meh.

  • http://twitter.com/myownhausfrau myownhausfrau

    It opened at the second run theater in my town. Obviously for good reason…

  • Raising_Kaned

    Local arthouse had a preview of this before Amour.

    If any film ever screamed out, “wait for cable…on second, thought — wait for a venue in which this is absolutely, positively your last entertainment option (like a desert island consisting of a TV and only THIS DVD), and then strongly consider a nap instead,” it would be Emperor.

    I know he’s supposed to be MacArthur, but why do they always have to cast white dudes in the leads in these things if it’s supposed to be a “view from the other side?”. They did the same thing with Bale in that Chinese flick that literally no one saw a couple years ago.

    At least Eastwood had the balls to go full-on Jap with his movie.