Rating: 7.8/10
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Writers: Mark Peploe (screenplay), Bernardo Bertolucci (screenplay)
Stars: John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O’Toole
Runtime: 2h 43min
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Released: 15 April 1988

Summary: Arrival. A train pulls into a station in North China. It’s 1950. Soldiers are everywhere. The train is a prisoner transport and all who depart from it are war criminals.
The prisoners are hustled into the station building to wait. After a short while, four prisoners suddenly get up, congregate across the room, and worshipfully prostrate themselves before a well dressed, bespectacled man (John Lone). The venerated man looks around uncomfortably. Guards lead the four worshipers away. The man retreats to a bathroom and locks the door behind him. After filling a sink with hot water he slits his wrists and plunges them into the water.
A short time later the prison governor (Ruocheng Ying) goes to the bathroom door. Finding it locked the governor pounds on the door, repeatedly shouting, “Open the door!” Inside the bathroom, the venerated man, prisoner, war criminal, watches his blood cloud the water in the sink. The man’s name is Pu Yi. He is the last emperor of China…