Empire of the Sun
Empire of the Sun
PG | 09 December 1987 (USA)
Empire of the Sun Trailers

Jamie Graham, a privileged English boy, is living in Shanghai when the Japanese invade and force all foreigners into prison camps. Jamie is captured with an American sailor, who looks out for him while they are in the camp together. Even though he is separated from his parents and in a hostile environment, Jamie maintains his dignity and youthful spirit, providing a beacon of hope for the others held captive with him.

Reviews
FeistyUpper

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

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Steineded

How sad is this?

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TaryBiggBall

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

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Zandra

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

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cinemajesty

Film Review: "Empire Of The Sun" (1987)To the minority of moviegoers in holiday season 1987/1988, director Steven Spielberg had had created a masterpiece of cinema. At a closer look "Empire of The Sun" had been an ambitious Hollywood movie production, which luckily features one of the most talented child-actor of his generation Christian Bale, carrying nearly 150 minutes of film on his 12-year-old shoulders with just a second-half anker-point in shapes of actor John Malkovich within an unrealistic-designed Prisoner-War-Camp abandoned by the Japanese, when the war for Chinese soil seems lost, and leaving Jim, the all-too-early becoming an adult, traumatized by war, finds his child memories in ruins in the middle of a ghastly desert base, filled by damaged properties of value within the spirit of a child's stolen time of life never lived.Copyright 2018 Cinemajesty Entertainments 2018

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gabe5525

As a fan of Spielberg's films, I felt obligated to see this film. While this is certainly a good film, this is not a great one or even one of Spielberg's best. Christian Bale does give a great performance, the visuals are spectacular, and John Williams gives a haunting score. This film though is very unfocused and aloof which can make the experience a bit of a chore to sit through. I have no issues with slow dramas as long as they keep me interested in the characters and their stories, but I felt no long attachment or affection for the characters other than Bale. There are great moments throughout that can make this movie worthwhile, but other moments that will make you wonder what is going on or why it should matter. Spielberg tries to make us feel emotion for this boy and his predicament, but all I could feel was emotional confusion. Spielberg's film unfortunately for me meanders from moment to moment showing signs of depth and understanding but ultimately feeling incomplete at the end.

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bstevens43

If it weren't for The Last Emperor, which is also one of the greatest films I've ever seen, this one would have won the Oscars for which it was nominated for 1988. Everything about it is first rate. The story, the cinematography, the sound, the music, and Christian Bale. Maybe my favorite part is really the music. John Williams is such a genius! The "Cadillac of the Skies" theme is escapism come true. This young boy comes to manhood in the most confusing of circumstances and his toy airplane is his last contact with his innocent and protected childhood. It is also his hero, his deliverer, his champion. The music tells this story. Some of the scenes haunt me, perhaps most especially the reunion with his parents. They find their boy, who looks like a man, and his reaction, for me as a mother, is jarring, but probably very accurate.

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Bill Slocum

A tough film about the cruelty of war and the death of innocence, "Empire Of The Sun" seems dedicated to a single point, that Stephen Spielberg can make a serious film. Unfortunately, "serious" is not the same as "good."It's December, 1941. Young Jamie Graham enjoys a life of privilege in western-controlled Shanghai, China. Those good times are about to end, thanks to the very same Japanese war machine Jamie idolizes. After the tanks roll in, he is separated from his parents and forced to fend for his own in a bleak landscape.Based on the real-life experiences of author J. G. Ballard, "Empire Of The Sun" is a story about human suffering above all. Another review here, more positive, describes it as "a small story told on a vast canvas," and that captures it for me, too. It's a painterly film, with vivid imagery abounding. In that way, Spielberg often channels the director originally slated to make this, David Lean. That said, I found myself thoroughly alienated from the people and situations involved.Christian Bale is a stunning actor, able at 12 to deliver the kind of performance as Jamie that raps you on the head like a two-by-four. But he's a handful. Either he's talking a mile a minute or staring off into space in some kind of feral transport. He's also really obnoxious and unlikable. This is noticed by some of the other characters, too."You're starting to get on my nerves," says an American scrounger he runs into in Shanghai, Frank (Joe Pantoliano)."Very difficult boy," is the verdict of Sgt. Nagata (Masatô Ibu), commander of the internment camp where Jamie is sent.My favorite is the response given by fellow prisoner Mrs. Victor (Miranda Richardson), when Jamie asks why the Japanese closed the schools: "To punish their parents."You have to find things to entertain you watching "Empire Of The Sun," since this is one time Spielberg won't do that for you. Like Jamie, or Jim as it becomes later, this is serious business all the way through, with starvation and disease gnawing at your elbows and hardly any hope in sight. Don't look for a bright light here; it just may be an atomic explosion."First one side feeds you, the other side tries to get you killed, then it's all turned around," Jim is told by his sometime buddy Basie (John Malkovich). "It's all timing."Malkovich is in great form, as movie-star ready as he ever looked on screen, and to solid effect, but I never got his purpose here. He doesn't bond with Jim, nor figure much in the outcome. No one does; Jim just wanders around until the scene shifts, after long languors, to something else. There's a desperate need here to trim, especially in the beginning and the end, but Spielberg and screenwriter Tom Stoppard are more concerned with Big Moment Cinema. We watch Jim serenade kamikaze pilots with a schoolboy chorale, and a minute later he's cheering their deaths at the top of his lungs, chanting "P-51! Cadillac of the skies!" If Spielberg can't engage you, he'll overwhelm you trying.Spielberg has gone on to make other serious movies, and to my mind, done so more successfully even if his tendency to overpush remains. You see moments here that remind you how good he is at scene-setting, but if I said I cared for five straight minutes watching "Empire Of The Sun," I'd be lying.

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