Sold mostly for Tommy Lee Jones’ performance as General Douglas MacArthur, Emperor nevertheless is set mostly around Gen. Fellers’ search for his lost love Aya while tasked by MacArthur to investigate the culpability of Emperor Hirohito for Japan’s war crimes during World War 2. The chisel-jawed blue-eyed blond-haired Matthew Fox as Fellers is a perfect sore thumb in an already shattered, slow-burning Tokyo, and despite some hammy dialog and pathos of the swelling orchestra type, Emperor nevertheless shows how the conflict of war and contrasting cultures doesn’t necessarily end when the one country surrenders and the other emerges victorious.

–DB