Beautiful to look at, but you'll need the patience of a saint to endure it

Rating: 3/10 (24 January 2015)

Empire of the Sun focuses on the life of Jim Graham (Christian Bale) who is a privileged young boy living with his wealthy family in Shanghai. Jim ends up being separated from his parents during the outbreak of war and ends up under the wing of Basie (John Malkovich) and his friend Frank Demarest (Joe Pantoliano). Soon after Jim meets Basie and Demarest, they all end up being captured and forced to spend a considerable amount of time in a Japanese POW camp.
For me, there were a lot of problems with this film but I think I'll get the major problem out of the way first; it's so boring!!! There seemed to be long scenes that went on forever and went nowhere - even though the film was 2 and a half hours long I found that nothing really happened - it wasn't interesting, entertaining, tense, exciting. It wasn't even particularly moving which is an effect Spielberg can normally pull off in his sleep.
The next problem was that the film suffered from very thin characterisation; none of the characters were developed, the friendship between Basie & Jim wasn't explored very well. Jim also becomes friends with a Japanese POW camp soldier which could have been interesting, but again wasn't developed to its full potential. I literally found myself bored, having nothing and no-one to care about. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it was a chore to sit through this dull film.
The final problem with this film lay with Bale's character; his almost constant whining and shouting ended up getting on my wick for the majority of the running time. He becomes less irritating towards the end, but I still found his character too much for the most part.
There were a couple of positives and the most obvious positive is the Cinematography; it was absolutely beautiful and almost made up for the dreadful screenplay. I also quite liked Jim's gradual transformation as the film progressed. However, these elements alone aren't enough to save this film which to me was an over-long, dull and tedious film that almost put me to sleep.