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| A plane crashes and burns against a huge sun and a boy whooping from the ground on this attractive poster for Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun |
A resourceful son of a wealthy British family in Shanghai's International Settlement during WWII gets lost from his parents in the city around the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and occupation of Shanghai. He spends the remaining years of the war sustaining himself in various camps.
Empire of the Sun is the 10th theatrical feature from Ohioan master filmmaker Steven Spielberg (Firelight (1964)). It is an adaptation of the same-titled, semi-autobiographical 1984 novel by J.G. Ballard (Crash (1973)), written by Tom Stoppard (Brazil (1985)).
Young Christian Bale (The Portrait of a Lady (1996)), whose second movie this was, makes an impression as the robust kid protagonist, but unfortunately his somewhat Oliver Twist-like character goes through the multitude of horrors the war confronts him with fairly untouched, which becomes awfully unengaging to follow for audiences like myself. He seems too far removed from it all to activate my empathy much. This is fatal for the film, which doesn't have any other seriously compelling characters.
The production is impressively huge, and the boy's flight through the chaos of Shanghai gives Empire of the Sun some of its few exciting minutes. Unfortunately the film is long-winded, boring and grandiloquent, one of the times that Spielberg's verve for classical storytelling did not succeed in producing a great film.
Related posts:
Steven Spielberg: War Horse (2011) - Spielberg visits WWI with problematic horse drama Super 8 (2011) - Abrams' nostalgic family crowdpleaser (producer)
Band of Brothers - TV mini-series (2001) - WWII-sacrifice and -comradeship portrayed with skill and integrity (producer)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) - A robot fairy tale with both heart and mind
Amistad (1997) or, Must... Free... Slaves!
Twilight Zone The Movie (1983) - Fear takes many forms in tragedy-struck anthology
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) - Spielberg's greatest accomplishment
1941 (1979) - Spielberg's bizarre 'comedy spectacular' sinks like a rock
Top 10: Best car chases in movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
Duel (1971) - Spielberg's truck terror is ideal afternoon fare
Watch a trailer for the film here
Cost: 35 mil. $
Box office: 66.7 mil. $
= Big flop
[Empire of the Sun premiered 8 December (Westwood, California) and runs 154 minutes. English master filmmaker David Lean (The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)) worked towards directing the film for a year before handing it over to Spielberg, believing it to be "too similar to a diary." Spielberg, on the other hand, had a strong personal connection with it and has called the film his "most profound work on the loss of innocence." Filming took place from March - June 1987 in Spain, England and China, where the production was the first American one to shoot in Shanghai since the 1940s, lasting 3 weeks there. A big part of the effort was to get the flight sequences and planes right. An amusing trivia is that Ben Stiller, who stars in the film in a small part as Dainty, at age 22 at the time, has since said that he got the idea for his war movie-ridiculing Tropic Thunder (2008) during shooting of Empire of the Sun. The film had a disappointing North-American release: It opened limited in 225 theaters to a 1.3 mil. $ first weekend at #9 and widened to bring in 2.9 mil. $ two weeks later in 673 theaters, still only at #9, eventually grossing 22.2 mil. $ (33.3 % of the total gross) domestically. Roger Ebert gave the film a tepid review and 2.5/4 stars, translating to a notch better than this review. The film was still nominated for 6 Oscars: Best Cinematography (Allen Daviau), lost to Vittorio Storaro for The Last Emperor, Score (John Williams), lost to The Last Emperor; Art-Set Decoration, Costume Design, Sound Design and Film Editing, all also lost to Bernardo Bertolucci's great The Last Emperor. The film was also nominated for 2 Golden Globes, 6 BAFTAs, winning 3, a David di Donatello award (Italy's Oscar) as well as winning 4 National Board of Review awards. Empire of the Sun is fresh at 70 % with a 6.8 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
Now: What do YOU think of Empire of the Sun?
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