The Children of Huang Shi

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The Children of Huang Shi

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The Children of Huang Shi

Anastasia Kolpakova, Guang Li, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Lin Ji, Matt Walker

Inspired by true events, the film tells the story of George Hogg, a young British journalist, who rescues 60 orphaned children. He leads them on a treacherous 1000-mile journey along the Silk Road, th...( read more  read more... )rough the Liu Pan Shan Mountains into the spectacular Gobi desert. Over the course of the journey he falls in love with a determined, self-trained nurse, and makes a friend in Chen, the leader of a Chinese partisan group. Madame Wang, a surviving aristocrat, assists in guiding them to safety in a remote village near the western end of China's Great Wall.

Id: 10910477

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The Children of Huang Shi Recent Reviews
  • crackingdanio
    December 10, 2008
    crackingdanio
    Ye, Jonathan Rhys Meyers was my one and only reason for seeing this but it's actually a real beauty. Based on real events The children of Huang shi tells the story of a British journalist played by Meyers working in china during the Japanese occupation, after a sequence of even...( read more)ts he sets about rescuing 60 orphaned children. Very moving, and the locations jawdropping, see it now.
  • EarthlyAlien
    November 30, 2008
    EarthlyAlien
    Chen: "What's your name? What is your nationality? British? And you're a journalist?
    George Hogg: How did you know that?
    Chen: Nobody but a journalist would walk into Nanjing armed with nothing but a sports coat. The enemy's patrol team is six streets away from u...( read more)s.
    George Hogg: What is this place? What's going on? Who are you?
    Chen: It's the Tax Office. And my name is Chen. Han-Sheng Chen.
    George Hogg: Han-Sheng Chen?
    Chen: Call me Jack, why don't you."

    Photobucket

    With stately cinematography, period piece detail, and a true-life tale that mixes historical conflict and doomed romance, The Children of Huang Shi has all the ingredients for a stirring epic. Yet the resultant concoction of wartime heroism and loss seems to have been cooked in a cinematic Easy Bake Oven, blending its familiar elements with uninspired clunkiness.

    Director Roger Spottiswoode's film offers a functional retelling of the life of George Hogg (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), an English reporter who in 1937 sneaked into Japanese-controlled China and, with the aid of colourful communist rebel Han-Sheng Chen (Chow Yun-Fat) and brave nurse Lee Pearson (Radha Mitchell), cared for - and then led to safety across hundreds of mountainous miles - a school of orphaned children. A tale of sacrifice and courage embroidered with sweeping vistas of early 20th-century China and shiny shots of Mitchell's long, flowing blonde locks, it's a TV film in disguise, a handsomely staid affair that, like all Western productions (Hollywoodian or otherwise) about the East, prefers skin-deep elegance to psychological or historical substance, moving from regal panorama to gallant speechifying to dewy-eyed amour with metronomic predictability.

    Huang Shi's schematism is apparent from the outset, in which a recap of Japan's ongoing occupation of China is provided via dialogue between Hogg and a fellow reporter that's so bullet-point compact, their back-and-forth comments feel directed not at each other but at the audience. Through some careful manoeuvring, Hogg sneaks into no-guests-allowed Nanjing, where he watches the Japanese army mow down citizens (women and children included) in a town square, and is shortly thereafter captured with incriminating photos of the executions.

    Just as a samurai sword is about to remove his head from his shoulders, Hogg is rescued by Chen, and after some mechanical firefights, sets off into China's heart of darkness, where he soon finds an orphanage of sixty young boys who are being cared for by an elderly woman. He stays the night, is almost beaten to death by the kids before Pearson arrives to save his hide, and is then convinced the next morning that, despite his desire to document the ongoing war for the public at large, the children - pint-sized encapsulations of the war's collateral damage - desperately need his help.

    The ensuing drama is of a rote sort, as Hogg restores the dilapidated orphanage, teaches English classes ('cause, you know, they have to know English, how else would they survive in China?), and earns the trust and respect of both his young charges - except for an older boy wrecked by bitterness over the murder of his parents - and Pearson. Montages of work and play, a demure love scene, Hogg's dealings with a benevolent and wealthy merchant (Michelle Yeoh) and slight romantic tension between Hogg and Chen (who appears to have a past with Pearson) all factor into Jane Hawksley and James MacManus' script.

    What doesn't, unfortunately, is a sense of who their protagonist is and, specifically, what drives his sudden, monumental altruism. Throughout, Hogg's actions appear motivated less by personal impulses than by basic plot dictates, his kindness, anger and boldness materializing when necessary but not bound by a concrete conception of his personality or beliefs. Rhys Meyers' (an actor I was always - and still am - very fond of) performance is in large part a failure attributable to the film's screenwriters, who seek simplified emotion and conflict as a means of condensing an apparently complex figure into a clear-cut hero fit for a heart-warming biopic.

    Pearson and Chen are similarly two-dimensional, yet more troubling than the schematic depiction of its characters is the film's rather perfunctory treatment of Hogg's renowned evacuation of the kids in his care. With the Japanese army poised to commandeer the orphanage, Hogg covertly gathers supplies and sets out along the Silk Road, a mountainous journey of over 700 miles that should serve as the grand climax of Hogg's surrogate-parent undertaking, but comes off as merely another chapter in his life.

    Aside from a few sequences that seem to have been hastily edited together, Spottiswoode's film boasts fine aesthetics, conventional narrative peaks and valleys, and dialogue that keeps every sub-textual issue at the forefront. Eventually lacking in considerable measure, however, is depth of character, situation and sentiment, the absence of which is piercingly felt during an end-credits coda in which some of the boys Hogg rescued recount the life-affirming legacy of a man whose greatness and heroism, alas, is never adequately conveyed by this film. I can't help but wonder what would a superior director and screenwriter could have achieved with this story. I guess we'll never know.
  • bort16
    May 8, 2008
    bort16
    Caught this one a little while ago. I was a bit dissapointed, though i wasn't really expecting too much I suppose to begin with.
    The story follows the true adventures of British journalist George Hogg during WWII in China, who witnessed atrocities at the hands of Imperial Jap...( read more)an. Hogg eventually ends up at a school, where he reluctantly, of course, becomes attached to the children. Hogg, played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, along with the help of an Austrailian Nurse (Mitchell) and a Chinese Communist (Yun-Fat) leads sixty children on a thousand mile journey across China's moutains to safety, away from invading Japanese forces.

    The technical quality of the filmmaking is solid - as is to be expected from Spottiswoode. However, it also carries the usual Spottiswoode flaws - namely more expositional dialogue than you can shake a stick at and convient contrivances throughout. I enjoyed Spottiswoode's previous film, the far superior Shake Hands with the Devil (which itself it not without his usual faults), but I just couldn't get into this one. The dialogue is too heavy handed and half of it is dedicated to delivering a history lesson. Spottiswoode's desire to inform is certainly admirable, and the story and the background history certainly are worthy of tellingh. Nevertheless, attempting to deliever both in depth is a recipe for failure.
    The acting is for the most part fine: Yun-Fat delivers a fine performance, as does Rhys-Meyers, who I think someday will likely deliever an amazing rendering of a psychopath (the eyes!).
    Overall, I can't quite recommend it, and my review may be slightly off as I don't remember it very well (which may actually justify my review). I wouldn't however tell you to avoid it. I'll probably rewatch it someday myself just to see how this review stacks up.
  • habitualdamnation
    April 7, 2008
    habitualdamnation
    The usual "no depth" accusation for war epics does not apply here - Spottiswoode knew what he was doin. I think he wanted to concentrate on Hogg and his interaction with the wee ones, not the battle shit nor detractin characters. Still, Chow Yun Fat has one line in this that alre...( read more)ady makes the whole movie a good watch.
  • ileo
    April 22, 2009
    ileo
    Here is an interesting movie about compassion, love, and honor. This follows one man?s journey into capturing firsthand the torments and reality of a war-stricken country in the brink of 1930?s China. Hogg is a young journalist whom believes that getting the inside scoop will lea...( read more)d to quick success, and high recognition but when experiences teach him another perspective. He begins to realize that it is more than just doing the job that he is capable of, but to express his inner self clearly and to embrace humanity, or lack of. Great cast- Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Radha Mitchell, Chow Yun Fat, and Michelle Yeoh. Worth seeing!
  • KeeganTaylor
    December 29, 2009
    KeeganTaylor
    Great movie. I saw the ending comming though.
  • OMGitsEMILY
    December 2, 2009
    OMGitsEMILY
    I loved this movie!! i thought it was soo cool and the ending was soo sad
  • filmguy450
    November 19, 2009
    filmguy450
    Overly long, and parts lof the middle drag, but it's got some amazing cinematography and very solid acting.
  • SarahTheMovieLover
    November 6, 2009
    SarahTheMovieLover
    A remarkable true story. You cant help but get attached to the story and be blown away by the fact that its based on true events. Sure, the movie isnt the best Ive ever seen, the acting isnt spectacular, but this movie is worth watching just for the story itself. It's different f...( read more)rom other war-time movies Ive seen. I'm glad I saw, and bought this movie.

    What did this movie teach me? This world is host to some incredible people, and its people like that that make life worth living.
  • SpunkyJamez
    October 13, 2009
    SpunkyJamez
    It's inspired by a true srory but at times it didn't feel like that. But I didn't care about that, because I just dug the hell out of this. The script is really good. I liked the pacing because it wasn't neither fast or slow. It was just right. The acting from the cast was great....( read more) The two chinese actors, Chow Yun Fut and Michelle Yeoh were ever so delightful. Radha Mitchell delivers a powerful performance, but the winner is easily Jonathan Rhys Meyers. He's fabulous! The characters each have something deep. I loved that. The little chinese children are all so sweet which gives you a fuzzy feeling, coz u really do start to care for them. I really liked this. It didn't really have any flaws. I'm sure that the critics will disagree with me, but for me, this is a winner!
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