Movie Review: The Last Emperor (1987)

A historical epic, The Last Emperor is the biography of the last man to occupy an extravagant but obsolete role during turbulent times.

In 1950, former Emperor Puyi (John Lone) is a prisoner of the Chinese government, accused of collaborating with the Japanese enemy. He arrives for interrogation at a prison in Manchuria, and his life story is recounted in flashbacks.

In 1908, Puyi is not yet three years old when he is summoned to the Forbidden City and appointed Emperor by the dying Empress Dowager Cixi. Eunuch servants look after his every need, but by the time he reaches his teenage years, China is a republic and the young Emperor is a disempowered and forgotten presence strictly confined to the Forbidden City.

Reginald Johnston (Peter O'Toole) arrives from Britain as a tutor, and Puyi attempts some reforms by clamping down on corruption among the eunuchs. He also selects a wife Wanrong (Joan Chen) and a mistress. In the mid-1920s he is evicted from the Forbidden City and relocates to the coastal city of Tientsin. He lives the playboy life and gradually falls under the influence of the Japanese imperialist regime, which is harbouring ambitions to militarily and economically dominate China, starting with Manchuria.

Independently produced by Jeremy Thomas, The Last Emperor was provided with unique access by the Chinese government to film on-location in the Forbidden City. Director Bernardo Bertolucci creates a visually beautiful, immersive and often stunning tapestry of an isolated time and place existing outside the realm of concurrent events. While the mammoth 163 minutes offer no shortage of artistry, the subject matter is unworthy.

At best, Puyi naively allowed his title and presence to be exploited by the Japanese. At worst, he collaborated with a murderous expansionist regime against his own country. Either way, he lived an entitled life utterly detached from his people, until his capture, imprisonment and reprogramming. None of this is the fault of a child plucked from his mother and appointed Emperor before he was potty trained, but an unsympathetic character who achieved little of note makes for a poor choice at the centre of an epic.

Meanwhile, history passes by on the margins of the film. Mammoth events shaping China are barely noted and largely unexplained, leaving the film bereft of both a rewarding core presence and meaningful context. The pacing is predictably ponderous, and the first hour is particularly laborious, essentially consisting of Bertolucci's cameras chasing a toddler around. As a travelogue of a hidden China the film always offers something to look at, but it's a struggle for any semblance of a plot to emerge.

The final two acts are much better. Bertolucci sets aside the fascination with the Forbidden City and the film moves on to the adventures of a young man surrounded by a useless entourage, living a lavish lifestyle and creating an almost too-good-to-be-true target for the Japanese to influence. The interrogation scenes also build momentum, starting with an intimidating search for the truth by Puyi's captors but navigating towards a surprisingly nuanced attitude towards rehabilitation as defined by the state.

A fine artistic creation at a grand scale, The Last Emperor paints with loving detail on an exotic canvass, but this Emperor really had no clothes.

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Movie Review: Year Of The Dragon (1985)

Michael Cimono's once-promising career was destroyed by the Heaven's Gate fiasco; that he was allowed to direct any more movies is in itself a surprise. Certainly Year Of The Dragon, Cimono's first movie after Heaven's Gate sank a studio and ended the era of wonderkid directors, does nothing to resuscitate his reputation.

Producer Dino De Laurentiis was always the risk taker, and he put his faith in Cimono to bring to the screen the story of hard-boiled idealistic cop Stanley White (Mickey Rourke) sticking his nose into a New York Chinatown gang conflict. White is of Polish origin and a Vietnam War veteran, and although he doesn't know it, he is still fighting that war. Sticking him into the middle of a brutal battle between rival Chinese warlords was never going to end well, and sure enough, the body count meter kicks into overdrive when White starts to poke around the affairs of the triads.

Joey Tai (John Lone) instigates most of the bloodshed as a young and aggressive gang leader, eager to push the old guard out of the way and expand the business into large-scale drug import and distribution. White, who trusts no one within the police ranks, teams up with reporter Tracy Tzu (Ariane) to expose Joey's corruption and violent methods. Not unexpectedly, both White and Tzu become attractive targets for Joey to dispose of.

Year Of The Dragon is unnecessarily long, flabby, and lacking in any genuine emotion. The characters are strictly linear and utterly predictable. Cimono does capture some chaotically gritty Chinatown locations, and a few of the set-pieces, notably a Chinese restaurant bullet fest, are well-executed. The film also benefits from an adequate Mickey Rourke performance, still a relative up-and-comer and not yet the parody of himself that he would morph into within a couple of years. But even Rourke struggles with the wooden script, co-written by Oliver Stone and Cimono, and filled with atrocious dialogue that would only sound real to a 12 year old boy discovering that initial jolt of testosterone.

Ariane is both a victim of the movie and a significant contributor to its failure. A questionable acting talent to begin with, she is saddled with an unrealistic character and atrocious lines that she reads into the camera with all the confidence and conviction of a fashion model suddenly asked to open her mouth. Year Of The Dragon was Ariane's first, and mercifully last, foray into the movies.

But Cimono would carry on for three more films, each faring worse than its predecessor in terms of box office performance, until his last directing effort, The Sunchasers (1996), was ignominiously released straight to video. Whether he was a talent lost to megalomania or whether there was ever any talent is a debate typically driven by individual opinions about his much-celebrated The Deer Hunter (1978). Either way, Year Of The Dragon is a perfunctory effort at best.

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