Kurosawa: The Last Emperor		Return to Pan-Asia Review Archive
	Year:	1999
	Director:	Alex Cox
	Producer:	Tod Davies
	Cast:	Francis Ford-Coppola, John Woo, Paul Verhoeven, Bernardo Bertolucci, Mike Hodges, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Tatsuya Nakadai, Andrei Konchalovsky, Donald Richie, Arturo Ripstein
	The Skinny:	Well-balanced documentary dealing with Akira Kurosawa's personal life and seminal works. Includes interviews with family, friends, co-workers, and filmmakers who were inspired by him.
	Review by Magicvoice:	A lot has been said about Akira Kurosawa over the years. But, despite clocking in at just under one hour, Kurosawa: The Last Emperor is a documentary that covers a lot of new territory. It starts with Kurosawa's childhood and through interviews with family and co-workers paints a very personal picture of the man's life and work up through to his death. The documentary psychoanalyzes Kurosawa's life, suggesting that certain seminal events (such as the suicide of his brother) shaped much of his work thematically. The information provided may not be all that interesting to the casual viewer but to fans of Kurosawa or serious film students, it will make you want to go back and watch all of his movies again armed with the new knowledge.      Director Alex Cox (Sid and Nancy) also includes the subtitled recollections of crewmembers and actors who worked on several films with Kurosawa, including specific details from filming of the classic Rashomon. The whole thing is rounded out with directors who were influenced by Kurosawa's work including John Woo who cites Seven Samurai as the key inspiration for the action scenes in The Killer.      Although Kurosawa: The Last Emperor is not entirely comprehensive in covering Kurosawa's body of work, it is nonetheless a compelling and very personal portrait of one of the greatest directors of all time. (Magicvoice 2003)
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