Eye Candy #128 - "The Children of Huang Shi"

The Children of Huang Shi: A rose-colored version of the life of George Hogg, a young British journalist who protected a group of Chinese orphans during World War 2 from the predations of war. Living in Shanghai, Hogg (played by Jonathan Rhys Myers) steals Red Cross credentials to sneak into Nanjing, the site of a particularly horrific siege by the Japanese against Chinese civilians. Once there, he is captured, escapes with the aid of Chinese Communist insurgents (led by the immortal Chow Yun Fat), and is wounded. During his convalescence, he is given refuge in an orphanage and soon finds himself thrust into the role of teacher, guardian, and father figure to sixty-some odd Chinese boys. Realizing the boys will not be safe from either the Japanese (who will kill them) or the Chinese (who will conscript them), he takes them on a 3 month, 600 mile journey to the edge of the Mongolian frontier to protect them. Michelle Yeoh and Radha Mitchell are in support. The film is not completely historically accurate - at least one large player (and notable Communist) in Hogg’s life and who shared his work is omitted completely while others are morphed into composite characters (like the American nurse based on the real nurse from New Zealand who Hogg aided, only to be played by an Australian; sound wildly unnecessary? It is.). Also the sense of time in the film is warped - Hogg entered Nanjing in 1938 and lived with the boys until 1945, but you don’t get any scope of that time. The circumstances leading to his death of tetanus are also changed (the real circumstances are actually more tragic than those depicted in the film, which makes the change inexplicable). Directed by Roger Spottiswoode, it is competent without being remarkable. Woodchuck sez, “I had higher expectations for this film.”