THE CHILDREN OF HUANG SHI
Directed by Roger Spottiswoode; written by James MacManus and Jane Hawksley; director of photography, Zhao Xiaoding; edited by Geoff Lamb; music by David Hirschfelder
With: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Radha Mitchell, Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, David Wenham, and Guang Li (Shi Kai). Rated R. Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes

Reviewed by Joel Johnson

This is the second film from our Asian trio weekend. This Australian-Chinese-German coproduction was released in the United States the same weekend as the latest Indiana Jones movie and has been struggling ever since to make headway with American filmgoers. This is a shame because it more than met my expectations as an historical epic. The film is based on the life of young Englishman George Hogg (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) who went to China as a news journalist in 1937 to cover the war between Japan and China. This conflict is virtually a three-sided affair as the Japanese invasion shows up in the midst of an ongoing civil war between Communists under Mao Tse-Tung and Nationalists under Chiang Kai-Shek. Their enmity for each other is only slightly suppressed by their common desire to oppose the Japanese. Hogg smuggles himself into Nanking-yes, the same Nanking that is often preceded by the phrase “Rape of”-where he witnesses horrible atrocities and nearly gets himself killed. George, from a family of pacifists, finds himself questioning his role as an observer and feels himself called to do something.

Although the lure of the gun is palpable, he instead finds himself in charge of an orphanage filled with parentless and traumatized young boys. He receives support in this endeavor and in a smoldering romance from Radha Mitchell’s adventurous Australian nurse Lee Pearson. Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh use their English skills to help Hogg (and the audience) understand the forces and, especially, the privations afflicting the Chinese people in the midst of this war. Chow Yun-Fat’s dapper Communist Chen Hansheng is a more dashing version of Claude Rains’s charmingly cynical Captain Renault from Casablanca. Once prosperous Michelle Yeoh is a black marketeer with a conscience. Although the orphanage is at a remove from direct combat, Japanese planes fly overhead daily, serving as a reminder of the conflict and the horrors of war inexorably draw closer. Hogg decides that boldly moving the orphanage hundreds of miles into China’s interior is the best option to keep the children safe.

Roger Spottiswoode’s film, based on Jane Hawksley and James MacManus’s script, succeeds in taking us to a China of seventy years ago. The film’s epic sweep is created and sustained by how well the filmmakers portray cities ravaged by war, the vastness and variety of China’s land, and the ebb and flow of humanity divided into refugees and soldiers. I am a sucker for a historical epic, and Spottiswoode’s film held me in its thrall for its entire 114 minute running time. The enchantment was thorough enough that I noticed, but was not bothered, that Radha Mitchell’s overburdened nurse intermittently managed to look more radiantly groomed and beautiful than any woman in her situation had a right to appear. Of course, I must confess that I do find Radha Mitchell’s beauty pleasing to behold. While I must acknowledge that the weight of critical opinion on this film seems less favorable than my own as measured by websites such as Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, I would urge filmgoers and home viewers alike not to pass on this old-fashioned story about taking responsibility and making sacrifices.