Canadian director Roger Spottiswoode reportedly worked on Escape from Huang Shi for half a decade, the US$40 million Mainland China-Australia-Germany co-production being known as The Children of Huang Shi for much of that time. However, the finished product’s focus was never really the 60-odd Chinese orphans shell-shocked English journalist James Hogg (Jonathan Rhys Meyer) came across after witnessing Japanese atrocities in Nanjing, the then capital of China, in 1937. Instead, as one might expect of the somewhat retro English language coming-of-age movie that it is, Escape from Huang Shi has two main characters that are Caucasian rather than Asian.

At one point, the female of the two remarks, “We’re all something different in China. That’s why we came”. The Oxford-educated Hogg had gone to embattled China in search of stories that would get the folks back home to realize a world war really was imminent. However, he ends up at the centre of a near mythical tale ministering to and leading a group of traumatised war orphans on a journey of several hundred miles to safety from both the Japanese and those Chinese Nationalist military for whom the older orphans are prime conscription material.

The based-on-reality film has been accused of taking liberties with the truth for the sake of drama and, particularly towards the end, attempts are made to paint James Hogg as a modern-day saint along the lines of Schindler’s List’s Oskar Schindler. Earlier on though, he comes across as more naive than anything else, especially in contrast to ‘Jack’ Chen Hang Sheng (Chow Yun-Fat), the West Point-educated Communist military man who saves Hogg’s life twice and Lee Pearson (Radha Mitchell), who, without any formal medical education, successfully performs surgery and treats people with tetanus and various other maladies.

Deciding that the well-meaning Hogg would be an impediment to the Chinese war effort, Jack and Lee divert his attempts to head to the front and the school-turned-orphanage at Huang Shi whose children had been running wild. And even in Huang Shi, Hogg attracts the animosity of Shi Kai (Guang Li), the dominant orphan, who prides himself on not being a peasant like the others, and who speaks English as well as Mandarin. But along the way, Hogg’s good nature, idealistic ways and humanistic philosophy win him friends, including Madam Wang (Michelle Yeoh), an aristocratic merchant from whom he gets seeds to raise crops to feed the hungry mouths at the orphanage.

The youthful-looking Jonathan Rhys Meyers does well with a role that calls for a degree of fluency in both Japanese and Chinese while 30-something Radha Mitchell is convincing as a courageous woman intent on helping others, even if it means having to suffer along the way. All the same, however, it does seem a pity to see veteran Asian superstars like the still very charismatic Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh playing supporting roles to Escape from Huang Shi’s less experienced lead pair. Yet if Asian audiences are content to see their old favourites in such secondary roles in Western movies, it doesn’t look like that will be changing any time soon.

Yvonne Teh