Elegant Travel Brochure

Rating: 5/10 (13 July 2005)

This movie is a let down. Vincent Canby's review in NYT sums it up elegantly.
"The Last Emperor" is like an elegant travel brochure. It piques the curiosity. One wants to go.
The movie is based on bare facts of a quite extraordinary life lived by someone who seems to have been a most commonplace person. Pu Yi was an accident of meteorology, the calm, rather empty center of the political hurricane that was blowing around him and that defined his place in history. Pu Yi was a cipher compared to the remarkable characters who, in one way or another, shaped his life and modern China.
The director was given access to some magnificent locations within the Forbidden City as well as elsewhere in China and Manchuria. The eye is frequently entertained, while the center of the screen remains dead. Mr. O'Toole rattles off his lines with speed and what often seems to be a comic disregard for what they mean. From time to time, when he must register a certain ineffable sadness, he enunciates each word as if it were a pearl, which it isn't. This is not a great performance. Somewhat better are Mr. Lone, Miss Chen, Miss Lu and Richard Vuu, who plays Pu Yi as a 3-year-old and looks angelic.
Ultimately, it's a let-down.