Emperor

Tommy Lee Jones stars as Douglas MacArthur, the victorious and imperious general in charge in Japan in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. It's MacArthur's tricky job to decide whether to have Japanese emperor Hirohito indicted for war crimes, bearing in mind Hirohito's godlike status in Japan, and the possibility of the huge civil unrest that might result from any indictment. MacArthur assigns the investigation of Hirohito's wartime culpability to a military subordinate (Matthew Fox, from TV's Lost), who's sensitive to Japanese sensibilities as a result of a pre-war tryst with a Japanese exchange student. Emperor is beautifully made and finely acted. It's maybe a little on the stodgy side, and the subplot about Fox's bid to find his lost love is just a spoonful of sugar to help the meaty military medicine go down. But, overall, it's a fascinating story, and one that's rarely if ever been seen on screen before. That alone makes it well worth the watch.