Donning sunglasses and clamping down on a pipe moments before exiting an American transport plane, General Douglas MacArthur announces, rather redundantly, "Now, let's show them some good old-fashioned American swagger." Yes, Tommy Lee Jones plays the "supreme commander" of the US forces in this historical drama from Peter Webber (Girl with a Pearl Earring) that takes place after the Japanese surrender in World War II, and the Oscar winner puts in another towering performance. Alas, instead of putting him front and center, the film demotes him to a supporting role and weaves a threadbare fiction involving MacArthur's real-life second-in-command, General Bonner Fellers (Matthew Fox), who must decide whether Emperor Hirohito (Takatarô Kataoka) should be hanged as a war criminal. The real criminals are the screenwriters, who distract with a dopey, doomed romance for the "Jap lover."
