Misleading Title Aside, Epic Biography Delivers
By MAL VINCENT
By Mal Vincent
The Virginian-Pilot
FOR THOSE WHO SAY they don’t make them like they used to, “The Children of Huang Shi” is proof otherwise. It’s a throwback to the kind of personal epics that dealt with big, historical happenings in heroic ways. It has a hero who never kills anyone, even though he is in the midst of a world that is about to go to war.
Set in China in 1937, it occurs during the Japanese invasion, beginning in Shanghai and continuing during the Japanese destruction of Nanjing to the village of Huang Shi and, finally, across mountain and desert to help the young people escape from the war.
The most misleading aspect of the film is its unfortunate title. It is not about children at all. It’s about a group of young orphaned boys who are wanted for the war. The title and the publicity that suggest hunk Jonathan Rhys Meyers leads a group of refugee orphans across the mountains suggests this might be in the territory of Ingrid Bergman in “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness” (1958), one of the corniest offerings in movie history, in which Bergman sings “This Old Man” with the children as they escape. (The song became a jukebox hit.) Or perhaps you’ll think of those cute Von Trapp children in “The Sound of Music.” Both images would be totally foreign to the content of the mistitled “The Children of Huang Shi.”
This is a biography of young Oxford graduate George Hogg who came to China as an inexperienced newsman. At a time when all journalists wanted to get into Nanjing, he did so on a Red Cross truck. Unwittingly, he ends up at a rural orphanage full of diseased, hungry charges. He makes a deal with the local opium mistress to get seeds to plant a crop and feed the brood.
The casting of young Rhys Meyers does much to suggest that this is a young man who never had this kind of responsibility before. The film, though, is plodding in its plotting and too abrupt in suggesting the change from a selfish young man to a saint.
While based on a true story, it has too many “Hollywood” cliches to be taken seriously as biography. Most notable is a triangular love affair involving a tough American nurse (Radha Mitchell) with Rhys Meyers and an idealistic Chinese rebel, played by the always- noble Chow Yun-Fat). Mitchell is blond and no pushover when it comes to fighting war and disease, but her purpose seems to be more to deliver suggestive glances to the two men.
Most prominent of the cliches, perhaps, is that yet again a European is instrumental in saving Chinese children.
Rhys Meyers won a Golden Globe for playing Elvis and is starring in various degrees of undress amid numerous wives as King Henry VIII on Showtime’s “The Tudors.”"Children” is perhaps the feature film he needs to make the crossover to becoming a star in theatrical ventures. This is the same kind of role, and subject matter, that made Gregory Peck a star with “Keys of the Kingdom.”
The early portion of the film has the epic look of Stephen Spielberg’s “Empire of the Sun,” complete with hundreds of extras, wartime aggression and beautiful landscape photography. Things slow down when we get to the cross-country trek.
In the final half, there is a bit too much of a “Climb Every Mountain” bravura about the heroics, but one is loath to complain because we seldom get that lack of cynicism in movies nowadays. This is an old-fashioned kind of Hollywood movie. With China so much in the news for the rest of this year, it provides a rousing, if whitewashed, look at that country’s turbulent history.
MOVIE REVIEW
“THE CHILDREN OF HUANG SHI”
Cast Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Chow Yun-Fat, Radha Mitchell, Michelle Yeoh, David Wenham
Director Roger Spottiswoode
Screenplay Jane Hawksley and James MacManus
MPAA rating R (violent executions, one sexual scene, played in shadows)
Mal’s rating
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Originally published by BY MAL VINCENT.
(c) 2008 Virginian – Pilot. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.