Matthew Fox and Tommy Lee Jones just about pull this flair-free film about Hirohito through

At the close of the second world war, General Bonner Fellers (Matthew Fox, looking like a peeved Luke Wilson) arrives in Japan at the behest of General MacArthur (Tommy Lee Jones) to settle a vexing question: should Emperor Hirohito be put to death as a war criminal, thereby condemning the nation which reveres him to a chaotic future, or would it be more expedient to let him live exonerated? "If you understand devotion, you will understand Japan," mutters Fellers. He knows whereof he speaks: whenever he recalls the Japanese schoolteacher (Eriko Hatsune) he met prior to the war, he experiences that medicated look that heralds another idyllic flashback. Emperor is dutiful, patient and almost entirely without flair. The leads just about pull it through. Fox is suitably grave, while Jones waltzes off with a handful of juicy scenes,...