During his long, esteemed career, director Steven Spielberg has worked within practically every genre but is mostly associated with action, science fiction, and war movies. Of the latter, his first effort was “1941” from 1979, a misguided action comedy starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd which is considered by most to be among the worst of Mr. Spielberg’s productions.
With “Schindler’s List” (1993) and “Saving Private Ryan” (1998), Mr. Spielberg solidified his mastery of the genre and crafted two of the greatest films ever made, while capturing his only two Best Director Academy Awards.
Unless you consider “Lincoln” (2012) to be a war flick (and I don’t), “Empire of the Sun” (1987) would be Mr. Spielberg’s third-best war film. Being “better” than “1941” is barely a compliment and finishing behind “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan” in a field of four is basically a wash.
Box Office Dud
Mr. Spielberg’s second weakest-ever box office performer (taking in just over $22 million), “Empire” deserves high marks for tackling a mostly unfamiliar World War II subject matter (a Japanese internment camp in China imprisoning Americans and Britons) and doing so in a commercially dicey, quasi art-house manner.As he did prior to “Empire” and continues to do, Mr. Spielberg puts a great deal of faith in placing the bulk of the narrative weight on the shoulders of an unknown juvenile performer. In this case, that would be the barely known Christian Bale (as Jim) who was 13 years old at the time of production. In this breakout role, Mr. Bale’s lead performance in “Empire” is nothing less than stunning.
More Like London
The movie starts in 1941 with a scroll and commanding voice-over informing us that Japan and China had been involved in a war since 1937. The city of Shanghai was home (since the late 19th century) to many upper-crust British citizens who essentially transformed their little corner of China into something that looked more like London or Liverpool. It was effectively an English town set up in the Far East.
A child obsessed with military aircraft, Jim is a spoiled rich kid who takes advantage of the domestic Chinese help, something which comes back to literally smack him in the face.
A Period of Transition
Adapted by Tom Stoppard from the semi-autographical 1984 novel by J.G. Ballard, “Empire” marks a point when Mr. Spielberg was making the transition from crowd-pleaser to formidable “artiste.”
The first indication that Mr. Spielberg might be overreaching is with his choice of including dialogue in multiple tongues without English subtitles. While this lends the film an air of uncompromising “authenticity,” it also unnecessarily challenges the audience to figure out what is being said in languages most don’t understand. Someone speaking Japanese softly or with anger doesn’t matter. Not being able to comprehend the dialogue for roughly 30 percent of the running time of a movie is a deal-killer.
It doesn’t help that “Empire” ends far less agreeably than it begins and none of this has anything to do with the content, but rather the style.
In the context of Mr. Spielberg’s overall output from a quality perspective, “Empire” lands just below the halfway point. Had “Empire” been made by a first-time director, it would’ve been considered an impressive debut; instead, it serves as a perfunctory transition piece for Mr. Spielberg.
For Mr. Bale, “Empire” acted as a career jump-start that has (hopefully) yet to peak.
For all of its shortcomings, “Empire” is a legitimate entry in Mr. Spielberg’s canon, but it could have been so much more.
