True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I am amazed at the few who gave this low ratings. It is, for me, one of the great world war two movies. Told from the p.o.v. of a bright intelligent young English boy who has led a pampered life , we see how the larger world struggles force him to adapt and live by his wits in order to survive. Although the photography, special effects and scenes of battle are amazingly shot to make you feel a part of the action, it is the personal story of a young boy becoming a man that is compelling. We are shown how he experiences not only the horror of war, but the beauty of it as well, as emotions are heightened by life and death struggles. I wish I had seen this on the big movie theater screen, but still worth watching in any setting.

Great Britain's "nickname" historically was the empire upon which the sun never sets. This was due to their far-reaching imperialist nature. The film even begins with a history lesson / scene setting exposition which illustrates how Shanghai was basically a British colony, indistinguishable from England in terms of its buildings and infrastructure. Hong Kong was still under British rule until the end of the last century.So, when another reviewer, NeuroticMovieLover, describes this film as one showing the destruction caused by a nation that wanted to control everything, I must ask, which nation would THAT be? Fascism was rampant around the world, highly fashionable with those in power at that time. Business leaders in the United States bristled at the notion that Germany was not a trustworthy ally, even as they began to conquer Europe. It was only because American business interests were threatened by fascist expansion that the U.S. entered the war against the "Axis of evil". We were just the other side of the same imperialist coin. Our overlords were better at selling servitude as freedom than the SS, Mussolini's black shirts or the Hirohito cult of personality.This film was very good at portraying people from every quarter as being as flawed as they were noble. This was not a movie condemning Japan as the bad guys.

I give this film a 10 out of 10 because I think it is a great movie. With that said, I find every character in the movie a total jerk. The main kid is a royal pain in the butt. He is a stuck-up brat with a wise guy answer for every question. The Chinese are presented as butt-kissers, beggars, and crooks. The Japanese military are sadists, psycho killers, and heartless butchers. The Americans are shown as an array of criminals, gamblers, backstabbers, cut-throats and heartless thugs. I really couldn't relate much to any of them. Only at the end did I find my emotions ; in the last few minutes. Maybe during times of war people act just like the characters in this film. Human emotions, feelings, compassion, and understanding are lacking in this movie. Then, again, it is lacking in the world we live in. Still, great acting makes Empire of the Sun a ten.

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.