Empire of the Sun (1987)

Second viewing; first viewed on April 10, 1988.

In 1941, during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, and subsequent evacuation of the British colony, a boy gets separated from his parents, and ends up in a prisoner camp.

This is hardly a great war story; rather, it is a collection of clichés which all the same make for a passable juvenile cinematic entertainment. The tone and filming style seem to mirror the manic personality of its protagonist. Grandiose pauses are injected when the boy enters his "Japanese" moments, with the musical score rising to the occasion. At other instances, trivial bike rides through an empty house seem to aim for the opposite poetic effect. None of that is really effective, coming across as merely artificial, but some critics seem to have bought it. Anyway, this film is an interesting example of the comic-book aesthetics that took over cinema and literature around the time it was made.

Rating: 51 (up from 50)