Decent film in a bad age of entertainment

Steven Spielberg's first foray into World War II films, unless you count 1979's godawful pseudo-comedy "1941," "Empire of the Sun" concerns itself with the fate of a young British boy (newest Batman Christian Bale, aged 12 years here) stolen away from his comfortable, upper-class existence and forced to endure the war in a Japanese prison camp in China. Generally and perhaps unfairly dismissed as one of Spielberg's select few failures as a director, "Empire of the Sun" is actually a somewhat harrowing tale of one youth's steadfastness in the face of incomprehensible adversity.\n1987 was a bad year for legitimate entertainment on all fronts, as one could argue was most entertainment from that decade, but Steve and company managed to piece together a solid telling of J.G. Ballard's autobiographical novel, which sees the young Bale conjuring up an impressive performance, as well as Malkovich respectfully hamming it as only he seems to know how.\nBale is convincing as a child ripped from his cushy existence and forced to exponentially mature in a harsh environment, yet the film tends to verge on maudlin at times, even though it never detracts from the overall experience. Viewing wartime from a child's point of view presents its advantages (heartbreakingly honest exposition), as well as its disadvantages (gratuitous belly-aching), yet Spielberg never enters the cream-puff territory of his worst films (1989's "Always" and 1991's "Hook"), but instead presents the story of J.G. Ballard without embellishment, and with a truly sympathetic eye.\nThe disc is curiously bereft of extras, except for the decent making-of doc, "A China Odyssey," and a spiffy digital transfer completed in 2001, but as with most of his films, Spielberg's vision is enough on its own to warrant a purchase. Allen Daviau's gorgeous cinematography, John Williams' always dependable scoring and Tom Stoppard's incisive screenplay are cause enough to give this mostly obscure offering an honest look.\nAlthough Spielberg would later prove himself the unsurpassed master of WWII filmmaking on both the epic emotional and historical front (1993's "Schindler's List") and the visceral combat and camaraderie front (1998's "Saving Private Ryan" and 2001's "Band of Brothers" miniseries), "Empire of the Sun" is still a curious peek into the mind of a director who was struggling to tell a unique war story of his own, but hadn't quite found his ultimate focus.