'The Children of Huang Shi'

Rating:

BY JOHN ANDERSON | Special to Newsday

May 23, 2008

A drama drawn in very broad strokes, Roger Spottiswoode's "The Children of Huang Shi" is based on the real-life adventures of George Hogg, who arrived in 1938 Nanjing, China, as a reporter and ended up taking 60 orphan boys on a treacherous mountain journey to escape the approaching Japanese, setting up a school/orphanage on the edge of the Gobi Desert.

The cast - Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Hogg, Radha Mitchell as the self-trained nurse Lee, Chow Yun-Fat as the Chinese partisan Chen and Michelle Yeoh as a merchant/hustler named Madame Wang - can do only so much with the script by James MacManus and Jane Hawksley, which strides along Hogg's timeline with nary a pause for nuance, nicety or emotional development. Hence the feeling that the film might have played better on television and may, in fact, one day soon. It is, however, such a spectacular-looking movie, as shot by cinematographer Zhao Xiaoding ("Hero," "House of Flying Daggers") that it is, to use that old cliche, worth the price of admission.

THE CHILDREN OF HUANG SHI (R). Intrepid reporter flees 1938 Nanjing with 60 kids, in the middle of Japanese invasion. Inspiring, but barely hangs together. With Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Radha Mitchell, Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh. Written by Jane Hawksley and James MacManus. Directed by Roger Spottiswoode. 2:05 (violence). At the Paris and the Sunshine, Manhattan.