Puraido: Unmei no toki (1998)

Running Time: 180 min.

Synopsis: Few films made in Japan have created such international outrage as Shunya Ito's Pride -- an affectionate biopic on that country's most notorious prime minister, Hideki Tojo, who was hanged in 1948 during the Tokyo trials for war crimes. Funded by renown ultra right-wing investors, this film struck many in China and Korea -- two countries on the receiving end of much of Japanese war crimes -- as close to a deliberate provocation, especially since Japan has yet to officially come clean about such wartime atrocities as the Rape of Nanking or the murderous Unit 731. Instead of the incarnation of evil that U.S. propaganda portrayed him as, Tojo, played by Masahiko Tsugawa, is presented as being a brilliant leader, a passionate nationalist, and a loving family man. His goal was not the subjection of Asia under a Japanese empire, but to cast off the yolk of Western colonialism. American prosecutor Joseph Keenan (Scott Wilson) is seen as shrill, ignorant, and scheming, while Indian judge Radhabinod Pal as the sole dissenting jurist is the film's only non-Japanese hero.