The Children of Huang Shi draws on the real life of British journalist George Hogg (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). Hogg is eager to enter China in 1937 to photograph the Japanese invasion, which no one seems to have precise information about. Once inside the country, though, he gets far more than he bargained for. He witnesses a brutal slaughter of Chinese civilians at the hands of the Japanese invaders, and he is threatened with execution for taking photos of the incident. Fortunately for Hogg, a Chinese partisan named Chen (Chow Yun Fat) comes to his rescue. Chen hooks Hogg up with Lee Pearson (Radha Mitchell), an Australian nurse who takes Hogg to a remote orphanage and abandons him there with some sixty homeless boys. Hogg eventually takes on the duty of caring for these children -- which is what Pearson was counting on -- & and ends up leading them on a journey of nearly a thousand miles across the snow-bound Liu Pan Shan mountains and away from the Japanese, to safety at the edge of the Mongolian desert.
The Children of Huang Shi (Sony Pictures Classics).
Screenwriters James MacManus and Jane Hawksley must shoulder the bulk of the blame for this misguided effort. The core story is a good one but they fail to find a way to invest it with vibrancy and three-dimensional characters. What they serve up is the worst clich e of the heroic white man coming in and saving non-whites from harm. The Chinese orphans initially refuse his help, test his patience, and look suspiciously at this silly white man. The Japanese invasion and the plight of these orphans quickly becomes a mere backdrop to the growing romance between Hogg and Pearson. We've seen that love story before but we haven't seen the story of these children before so it's a shame that the film wastes an opportunity to shed light on an unfamiliar chapter in history. So instead of scenes depicting the lives of these boys and their transformation under Hogg, or Hogg's interaction with them, we get ridiculous love scenes with lines like, "You are the bravest, most beautiful woman I've ever met." We don't need that kind of lame romance but we could use more information about the class structure that makes certain children outsiders, or why some kids are filled with so much rage and mistrust. A sense of what the Japanese invasion meant for these Chinese civilians was much better delineated in the documentary Nanking from earlier this year.
Radha Mitchell and Jonathan Rhys Meyers in The Children of Huang Shi (Sony Pictures Classics)
Director Roger Spottiswoode has tackled the white hero in a foreign land before. In Under Fire, Spottiswoode also looked to white journalists, this time ones played by Nick Nolte and Joanna Cassidy, to enlighten us about Nicaragua. In Shake Hands with the Devil , he provided an adaptation of Canadian Romeo Dallaire's autobiography Shake Hands with the Devil about what he witnessed during the Rwandan genocide. (But don't confuse his film with Peter Raymont's more impassioned documentary, also called Shake Hands with the Devil) . In The Children of Huang Shi, Spottiswoode proves her can frame a pretty picture and capture the most luminous light from magic hour, unfortunately his characters and story display less radiance.
He also fails to allow Hong Kong stars Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh (who plays a Chinese aristocrat) to display any of their talent. Chow in particular has to suffer through yet another English language role in which he barely cracks a smile. In Hong Kong, filmmakers let him play a full gamut of emotions and in a variety of genres. Chow is an actor of great charm and physical grace but he just never gets a chance to displays those skills in English language works. Yeoh fares little better. She looks elegant but she plays a stock character and never gets to do much acting. Yeoh, by the way, worked with Spottiswoode on the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies and at least in that one he let her kick some serious butt. Rhys Meyers and Mitchell try hard but cannot advance much beyond stiff.
The Children of Huang Shi (rated R for some disturbing and violent content) means well and actually has a solid story at its core. But what Spottiswoode and company do to that good story is unforgivable. And won't someone please give Chow an English language starring vehicle that will tap the full range of his talent!
Companion viewing: Nanking, Shake Hands with the Devil, Under Fire, Tomorrow Never Dies, Hong Kong 1941, All About Ah-Long
