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The Children of Huang Shi wastes no time in acquainting the viewer with the gruesome realities of 1937 war-torn China. Barely have we made the acquaintance of George Hogg (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a footloose graduate of Oxford, hanging out in the sheltered European quarter of Shanghai and conceiving the bright idea of covering the Japanese invasion of China as a journalist, when we're in the middle of a Japanese massacre of Chinese civilians.
Hogg, who has talked his way into the Japanese occupied city of Nanjing, sees the massacre while hiding in the ruins of that city. He will never be the same again.
Spottiswoode, a veteran English director whose previous film, Shake Hands with the Devil, was about the massacres in Rwanda, clearly knows a thing or two about pacing, as well as the art of portraying real-life horror without rubbing the audience's collective nose in it.
The focus remains on the character of Hogg as portrayed by Meyers, a very fine actor who has effectively portrayed such disparate characters as Henry VIII and Elvis Presley in television miniseries. One scene I won't forget is Hogg about to have his head cut off by a Japanese executioner. Meyers' impression of a man on the brink of death is restrained but harrowing, like everything else in the movie.
Helping Hogg survive in this war are an amiable Communist partisan, Jack Chen (Chow Yun-Fat) and a no-nonsense American nurse, Lee Pearson (Radha Mitchell). Chen steers Hogg clear both of the Japanese and the Chinese Nationalist armies, the latter a body almost as ruthless, if not quite so maniacally vicious, as its foe. (Chinese Communist forces, aside from Chen, are not shown in the movie, but it is a safe bet they don't behave like Eagle Scouts either.)
Pearson convinces Hogg to abandon his role as foreign correspondent and take over operation of an abandoned school harbouring 60 orphaned boys – a near-hopeless task that gets even more desperate when he has to lead his charges on a long trek across mountains and deserts for safety's sake.
It's a compelling story, with only a few jarring notes. There's a Hollywood touch of make believe in the way that Hogg suddenly reveals his talents as an expert agriculturalist and mechanic, able to fix the school's generator. A journalist with mechanical abilities? The Japanese would have spotted him as a fake reporter right on the spot if they'd seen him wielding that monkey wrench with authority.
It is also disappointing to see the love interest between Hogg and nurse Pearson – a character who battles inner despair at the same time as she works medical wonders – develop ultimately along conventional Hollywood lines.
The biggest unsolved issue raised by the movie, however, has to do with Hogg's ambivalence around pacifism. "My family are pacifists," he proclaims at one point. "Not just your quiet normal pacifism – oh no, they're famous for it. My mother had Gandhi for tea."
Hogg, who seems to want to cling to some vestige of that family ideal, is confronted with the old dilemma of pacifists, namely that other people end up doing their fighting for them.
Three times during his China sojourn the altruistic non-combatant Hogg is rescued by other people, sometimes at great cost to themselves. They dirty their hands while enabling him to be saintlike.
It is an issue that the movie raises but never resolves.
Despite that failure, however, the movie does hold together, with an impressive coda: A series of real life survivors of Hogg's orphanage, now old men, movingly testify to the way in which Hogg not only saved their lives, but inspired them to make something of them.
Hogg, who has talked his way into the Japanese occupied city of Nanjing, sees the massacre while hiding in the ruins of that city. He will never be the same again.
Spottiswoode, a veteran English director whose previous film, Shake Hands with the Devil, was about the massacres in Rwanda, clearly knows a thing or two about pacing, as well as the art of portraying real-life horror without rubbing the audience's collective nose in it.
The focus remains on the character of Hogg as portrayed by Meyers, a very fine actor who has effectively portrayed such disparate characters as Henry VIII and Elvis Presley in television miniseries. One scene I won't forget is Hogg about to have his head cut off by a Japanese executioner. Meyers' impression of a man on the brink of death is restrained but harrowing, like everything else in the movie.
Helping Hogg survive in this war are an amiable Communist partisan, Jack Chen (Chow Yun-Fat) and a no-nonsense American nurse, Lee Pearson (Radha Mitchell). Chen steers Hogg clear both of the Japanese and the Chinese Nationalist armies, the latter a body almost as ruthless, if not quite so maniacally vicious, as its foe. (Chinese Communist forces, aside from Chen, are not shown in the movie, but it is a safe bet they don't behave like Eagle Scouts either.)
Pearson convinces Hogg to abandon his role as foreign correspondent and take over operation of an abandoned school harbouring 60 orphaned boys – a near-hopeless task that gets even more desperate when he has to lead his charges on a long trek across mountains and deserts for safety's sake.
It's a compelling story, with only a few jarring notes. There's a Hollywood touch of make believe in the way that Hogg suddenly reveals his talents as an expert agriculturalist and mechanic, able to fix the school's generator. A journalist with mechanical abilities? The Japanese would have spotted him as a fake reporter right on the spot if they'd seen him wielding that monkey wrench with authority.
It is also disappointing to see the love interest between Hogg and nurse Pearson – a character who battles inner despair at the same time as she works medical wonders – develop ultimately along conventional Hollywood lines.
The biggest unsolved issue raised by the movie, however, has to do with Hogg's ambivalence around pacifism. "My family are pacifists," he proclaims at one point. "Not just your quiet normal pacifism – oh no, they're famous for it. My mother had Gandhi for tea."
Hogg, who seems to want to cling to some vestige of that family ideal, is confronted with the old dilemma of pacifists, namely that other people end up doing their fighting for them.
Three times during his China sojourn the altruistic non-combatant Hogg is rescued by other people, sometimes at great cost to themselves. They dirty their hands while enabling him to be saintlike.
It is an issue that the movie raises but never resolves.
Despite that failure, however, the movie does hold together, with an impressive coda: A series of real life survivors of Hogg's orphanage, now old men, movingly testify to the way in which Hogg not only saved their lives, but inspired them to make something of them.
