I admire [Steven Spielberg] for sticking to the brattishness of Jim, which is implicit in the book, but what the director failed to work out was a way of making us care about what happens to him.

[Stephen Spielberg's] graduation to grown-up film-making.

What is most remarkable about Empire of the Sun then, is the almost seamless fashion in which a faithful adaptation... has nevertheless contrived to become a proto-Spielbergian affirmation of faith and optimism in the universe.

Even though you might be impressed by the portentous mood, you'll wonder how a film that comes to look like a sanitised fusion of The Go-Between and Tenko can have been derived from a novel that has been favorably compared to A High Wind in Jamaica.