People thrown into an unexpected and desperate situation discover their capacity for love and responsibility. A young Englishman, George Hogg, comes to lead sixty orphaned boys on a journey of almost a thousand perilous miles across the snow-bound Liu Pan Shan mountains to safety on the edge of the Mongolian desert. And how, in doing so, he comes to understand the meaning of courage. During his journey, Hogg learns to rely on the support of Chen, the leader of a Chinese partisan group who becomes his closest friend. He soon finds himself falling in love with Lee, a recklessly brave Australian adventurer whom war has turned into an unsentimental nurse on horseback. Along the way Hogg befriends Madame Wang, an aristocratic survivor who has also been displaced by war, who helps the young Englishman, his friends and their sixty war orphans make their way across mountain and desert regions to a place of safety near the western end of the Great Wall of China.
Genre(s): Drama, War
Runtime: 125 minutes
Rating: 6.9/10 (3,134 votes)
Release Date: 8 February 2008
Country: Australia, China, Germany
Languages: English, Japanese, Mandarin
Company: Australian Film Finance Corporation (AFFC)
Sound: Dolby Digital
MPAA: Rated R for some disturbing and violent content.
Director(s): Roger Spottiswoode
Producer(s):
Lillian Birnbaum – executive producer
Arthur Cohn – producer
Yong Er – line producer
Martin Hagemann – producer
Alan D. Lee – produced in collaboration with
Peter Loehr – producer
James MacManus – associate producer
Yuan Mei – co-producer
Wieland Schulz-Keil – producer
Jonathan Shteinman – producer
Taylor Thomson – executive producer
Nina Yang – produced in collaboration with
Steve D. Yang – produced in collaboration with
Writer(s):
Jane Hawksley – writer
James MacManus – writer
Simon van der Borgh – uncredited
Cast:
Jonathan Rhys Meyers – George Hogg
Radha Mitchell – Lee Pearson
Yun-Fat Chow – Chen Hansheng
Michelle Yeoh – Mrs. Wang
Guang Li – Shi-Kai
Lin Ji – Horse Rider
Matt Walker – Andy Fisher
Anastasia Kolpakova – Duschka
Ping Su – Eddie Wei
Imai Hideaki – Japanese Officer
Music: David Hirschfelder
Tagline: War made them orphans, one man made them legends
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Film version of the life of George Hogg. Hogg was a British nationalwho went to China during the Rape of Nanking as a reporter and ended uptaking care of a bunch of orphans in the face of Japanese barbarity onthe Chinese people.
The version I saw was dubbed completely in Chinese and had Englishsubtitles. As it stands now its a good but rather standard film about aman who tried to do something in the face of war. The film starsJonathan Rhys Meyers as Hogg. He's fine, but I don't think he's givenmuch to do since much of the action seems to be reduced to cliché, eventhe romance with the broken Australian nurse has the feeling of beenthere. Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yoeh have small but important roles(respectively) as a general who befriends Hogg and a black marketeerwho helps him. I liked it but didn't love it (its one of those filmsthats "almost.." but isn't and falls between the cracks). Perhapsbecause of the possibly bad subtitles or more likely the clichéd scriptthe under appreciated Roger Spottiswoode used just isn't great. Thisisn't to say there aren't a couple of great set pieces, there are, theattack on the train in particular, but its not enough to raise the filmfrom the near great to the great, or from nearly very good to verygood. It just sort of misses. The just sort of misses feeling wasre-enforced after I read some pieces on line which gives more detailson the real George Hogg (He needs a miniseries about his life not twohour film) 6ish out of 10
As a Chinese,I Was moved by Hogg.He was a foreigner to Chinese,but hedid his best to look after all the children.At first,he thought theonly thing he wanted to do was to let the world know the china'sevents.Teaching the children was not his purpose.But in the end,hebegan to attend to the children and finally he took them a safety placecalled Shandan.He liked peace so he wanted to the children lived in apeace place.But unfortunately,he was suffered from lockjaw. The lifewas not easy for the orphans at that time.A boy felt home's importanceand finally suicided.
We should remember the foreign friends who contributed a lot to China'srevolution.In addition,we must treasure what we owe today.
Children of Hueng Shi (2008) **1/2
(Quick Review)
Caught this one a little while ago. I was a bit disappointed, though iwasn't really expecting too much I suppose to begin with. The storyfollows the true adventures of British journalist George Hogg duringWWII in China, who witnessed atrocities at the hands of Imperial Japan.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 ChineseCommunist (Yun-Fat) leads sixty children on a thousand mile journeyacross China's mountains to safety, away from invading Japanese forces.
The technical quality of the film-making is solid – as is to beexpected from Spottiswoode. However, it also carries the usualSpottiswoode flaws – namely more expositional dialogue than you canshake a stick at and convenient contrivances throughout. I enjoyedSpottiswoode's previous film, the far superior Shake Hands with theDevil (which itself it not without his usual faults), but I justcouldn't get into this one. The dialogue is too heavy handed and halfof it is dedicated to delivering a history lesson. Spottiswoode'sdesire to inform is certainly admirable, and the story and thebackground history certainly are worthy of telling. Nevertheless,attempting to deliver both in depth is a recipe for failure. The actingis for the most part fine: Yun-Fat delivers a fine performance, as doesRhys-Meyers, who I think someday will likely deliver an amazingrendering of a psychopath (the eyes!). Overall, I can't quite recommendit, 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 toavoid it. I'll probably rewatch it someday myself just to see how thisreview stacks up.
I watched this movie last Saturday, and here are some feelings of mine."The children of Huangshi" brought me an vivid image of the realityduring the pre-WWⅡ. George Hogg, also known as Heke was a courageous,insistent and responsible man. He treated the homeless orphans asordinary innocent children while the Japanese enemy and thenationalists never showed any mercy to them. Children were victims ofthe wars. They lost their families, their childhood, and even theircourage to live. Wars also raised the hatred in their mind, changingthem into devils. In the movie, two echo scenes impressed me a lot： Oneis the photo of Shikai' family, the other is a photo of a Japanesesoldier. Shikai saw his parents and his sister be killed atrociously byJapanese and since then he became dissociable and unreasonable and theonly hope to him was the photo. When he got the chance to killJapanese, he did it decidedly, only to find that a family photo holdingin the soldier's hands. Heke tried to release the children's hatred andhe wanted them to be normal children. At some aspect, he succeeded,because the children of Huangshi, e.g. Laosi, found his way back to bea happy child under Heke's education; however, the damage of the warwas too huge to be cured. Most of the children were saved but not whatthey were used to be any more. Anyway, Heke is a great man. Although heis a foreigner, he is our national hero forever.
This movie would have been better as a fantasy instead of a historicaldrama. It would have made more sense that way. Children of Huangshistarts off with a bang, appearing as if it's going to be some epicmasterpiece, but by the end of the movie, you're left wondering wherethe story went.
I'm not an expert on the specific details of history during thisperiod, but after reading some other reviews, it looks like neither arethe creators. Then again, I don't expect movies, even historical ones,to always be historically accurate. But what bothers me is that it'sobvious this movie was made by some westerner or at least someone whodoesn't actually know much about China and Chinese people. It's okay tobe from a different culture, but please do your research. Every timeChow Yun-fat's character acted as if he stepped out of a Jackie Chanmovie, I winced with pain. Since this movie was partially made by aChinese production company, I'm even more disappointed.
As for the acting, good job Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. At least he's easy onthe eyes. The other actors did an all right job as well. Nothing awfulbut nothing to write home about. However, I (and the movie) could'vedone without the heavy dialogue. At points it sounded much too forcedand unnatural, not to mention, incredibly cheesy.
It also bothered me that by the end of the move, the plot seems torevolve around the main character and his romance. Shouldn't it be lessabout snogging and more about Hogg's relationship with the children? Ithought that was the point of the story and that's why he's famous:helping kids in the face of war and cultural differences and notscrewing some blonde chick. It doesn't take a hero to do the latter.
Beautiful cinematography, but poorly written and poorly executed.
Greetings again from the darkness. It is difficult to imagine a morepowerful, emotional story than the real life heroism of George Hogg. Hewas a British journalist who truly saved the life and dreams of 60 warChinese war orphans during the 1937 invasion by Japan.
The good news is that the story is remarkable, but the downside is howdirector Roger Spottiswoode ("Tomorrow Never Dies", "Turner and Hooch")is stuck with two miscast leads. Jonathan Rhys Meyers doesn't have thechops to pull off strength of Hogg and much worse is the downrighthorrible performance of Radha Mitchell as Lee, the war hardeneddo-gooder. The combination of these two severely weaken the film, butluckily not the story.
Chow Yun-Fat and the great Michelle Yeoh play important supportingroles and both are excellent in their English speaking parts. Both aremasters at letting simple facial gestures express the bulk of theirthoughts. The children in the film are a pleasure to watch, though, wereally don't connect with any of them.
Some of the landscape is beautifully film and Spottiswoode does a goodjob of portraying the hardships of the 700 mile Silk Road journey,without it dragging the pace down. Again, the power of this story isunmistakable, but it is certainly not given its due by this rendition.Make sure to stay for the credits as we are treated to first handmemories of some of the surviving children (now very adavanced in age,but extremely lucid).
I really loved this movie though many may disagree and find it a bitchildish, i prefer to look at it as a message of hope. OK, Maybe hopeis a lie,blah blah…but sometimes, just sometimes, we need to pretendit's not and this movie achieves that. for an hour and a bit, it givesyou that feeling, that sometimes throughout human history, there areactually some people (one man, one woman, one child, it doesn't matter)that can make hopes true just by believing it very hard and workingvery hard for it's beliefs. But at the same time, this movie nevertryes to hide the harsh reality of war (and this history passage inparticularly), just recognises it but put it a bit out of the bigscreening drama, and show an other side: the history of great men inthe middle of it that deserve an homage, passing the message, that,when life happens, some run, some make the best they can with it evenif they wonna run. OK, the dialogues were a bit to much worked out, thestory goes a bit away from many details for political politeness (iguess) which is the only flaw i can see in the all movie. The actors,all of them, seemed really up to the job it was supposed to bedelivered: I think it meant to be an homage, a simple story of courageand hope of one man, and not a war movie, so i think it achieved itsgoal. For the fans of harsh war movies (as myself): OK, this is not oneof them, but i don't think it was meant to be either, and i think itserved it's purpose, and i think it's not weak to recognise we can likeboth genres for they complete one another.
I just saw this in the theater and was REALLY looking forward to seeingit with the GREAT Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh, but although thescenery and large amount of money spent in making this, the film stillfalls flat. I am sure many people like Jonathan Rhys Meyers, but thisguy CANNOT act to save his life!!!!!!!! Another reviewer thought thatRadha Mitchell was wooden, but I didn't mind her performance althoughher Aussie occasionally slipped in. Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh'sperformances, while fun to watch, seemed a bit "phoned in", althoughthe supporting cast of children wasn't too bad. The script was very,very weak and there were a couple of times when they had the Japanesefighter planes strafing the ground that you could DEFINITELY tell thatthey were squibs and did NOT come off as genuine bullets hitting theground (too much spark and flash). Overall, really sad considering thetime and effort that went into making this film. I likely WON'T pickthis one up on DVD unless it's really cheap.
"The Japanese are not savages," insists George Hogg(Jonathan RhysMeyers)to a fellow photo-journalist, while from their vehicle, we seerefugees traverse the Nanking roadsides and the Japanese soldiers whokeep the Chinese capital under siege. Both men find themselves in thisforeign land on a mission to substantiate reports about a massacre.When George finds himself separated from his colleague, he witnesses agroup of Chinese men and women being gunned down mass execution style.Although "The Children of Huang Shi" doesn't whitewash the violencethat went down in Nanking, the filmmaker does temper the killing to adegree, in which ethnic cleansing never becomes the subject of thefilm. If you're expecting an adaptation of Iris Chang's "The Rape ofNanking", you'll be sorely disappointed. When our story begins, themassacre is over and done with. Since "The Children of Huang Shi"withholds from its audience the number of Chinese people involved inthe slaughter, this enables the filmmaker to portray the Japanese asrational people.
In one scene, George convinces an army general to call off his troopsfrom searching for weapons at a random check-point. The filmmaker wantsus to believe that the Japanese official would care about his soldierscontaminating the sterilized medical supplies meant for the sick andinjured Chinese people. This show of clemency is downright laughable.In "The Rape of Nanking", Chang details instances in which women'sbabies were ripped out of their wombs, young girls being raped, whilethe city was reduced to rubble, and its people, literally, chopped intopieces. Later in the film, a Japanese soldier discovers the hat of acomrade placed on the head of a Chinese boy. George explains that theorphan found the hat on the ground during their sojourn. Even worse,one of the older boys points his gun at the Japanese contingent.Incredibly, an exchange of gunfire is averted, even though thehistorical record shows that the Japanese soldier had no qualms aboutaiming their guns at children.
But let's be fair. Along with the HBO documentary "Nanking", the storyof Japan's war crimes are finally being told to a western audience.It's about time. Although the orphans don't get enough credit for theirown survival, George Hogg is deserving of the accolades that hisself-evident heroism brought him. But just in case the audience failsto recognize what this man accomplished, Mrs. Wang, an opium dealer,tells George how wonderful he is. Lee(Radha Mitchell) seconds thatemotion. She had her doubts when the nurse assigned George to theorphanage. And then there's the real-life survivors who offer theirtestimony about his greatness during the closing credits.
The film never proves that the Japanese are savages, but Lee was inNanking during the siege. If the audience knew about the nature of theattack, Lee's disproportionate anger over George's redecorating effortson her living quarters, which inspires the nurse to storm out of theorphanage, would make this British woman completely insufferable.
The less you know about "The Rape of Nanking", the better.