Executscan Expected more

Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Mehdi Hoffman There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

James Turnbull I have given this movie a fairly good mark because it is generally well directed, acted, and beautifully shot. It is also very good entertainment. But it is full of gross historical revisionism which does not do George Hogg full and proper credit and entirely omits the key role of the New Zealander, Rewi Alley, who was behind the orphanage and the leader of the march. So far as I can tell,the 'Australian nurse' with the American accent is a love interest invention and while mostly based upon real events, needlessly distorts history for some minor titillation (no pun intended).I continue to fail to understand while moving and gripping real life stories need to be needlessly tweaked when they more than adequately stand alone.Enjoyable but irritating at the same time if you know the true story.Hogg by the way way, caught tetanus by stubbing his toe playing basketball in a dung ridden surface, not under a broken truck axle. This is just an example of the needless revisionism so common today. The stubbed toe could have been made just as dramatic.

copperncherrio Based on a real story of an Englishman George Hogg (played by Jonathon Rhys Meyers), during the Japanese invasion of China. The story follows our English journalists as he bares witness to Japanese atrocities during the invasion and killing of Chinese citizens, during which he became key protector of 60 Chinese orphans in Huang Shi. Not only did he make the place livable for those kids, but he also marched them 700 miles over a period of 2 months through mountains… DURING WINTER to escape oncoming Japanese troops.Spoiler alert, he dies of Tetanus at the age of 30 after the kids survive. I watched this movie with my parents, mainly because it was Asian oriented. Plus it had a couple of Asian actors that my parents were fond of. The story was good, mainly because it brought to light a historical hero that I've never heard of before… after which there was a lot of Wiki reading about George Hogg.The movie in all followed a better story than acting. It felt like an reenactment (more accurate than most movies), but without the soul of a fictional movie. The characters were dry but there were some good scene…. but nothing that pulled at the heart strings.Overall, it's a great historical story: inspiring and with an unknown historical background (at least to most Western watchers).

siderite This is like a Schindler's List for the Chinese. It's a war story that focuses not on the terror and pain and atrocities, but on the good a person can do and it is based on a true story. Something that needs to be told and remembered.That being said, was it a well told story? Yes and no. It seemed terribly fragmented to me, moving from one scene to the other with the speed of a bullet. It is hard to "feel" the individual character changes because it all happens so fast. Of course, I couldn't expect a two hour movie to slowly tell a story that spanned many months in real life, but still. You can't show two friends entering China, then one dying and completely omit him from the story from then on because you don't have time. On the other hand, I hardly see the subject as appropriate for a mini series.Bottom line: good story, good acting, watch it if you feel the need for a good war time drama that inspires.

Chad Shiira "The Japanese are not savages," insists George Hogg(Jonathan Rhys Meyers)to a fellow photo-journalist, while from their vehicle, we see refugees traverse the Nanking roadsides and the Japanese soldiers who keep the Chinese capital under siege. Both men find themselves in this foreign land on a mission to substantiate reports about a massacre. When George finds himself separated from his colleague, he witnesses a group of Chinese men and women being gunned down mass execution style. Although "The Children of Huang Shi" doesn't whitewash the violence that went down in Nanking, the filmmaker does temper the killing to a degree, in which ethnic cleansing never becomes the subject of the film. If you're expecting an adaptation of Iris Chang's "The Rape of Nanking", you'll be sorely disappointed. When our story begins, the massacre is over and done with. Since "The Children of Huang Shi" withholds from its audience the number of Chinese people involved in the slaughter, this enables the filmmaker to portray the Japanese as rational people.In one scene, George convinces an army general to call off his troops from searching for weapons at a random check-point. The filmmaker wants us to believe that the Japanese official would care about his soldiers contaminating the sterilized medical supplies meant for the sick and injured Chinese people. This show of clemency is downright laughable. In "The Rape of Nanking", Chang details instances in which women's babies were ripped out of their wombs, young girls being raped, while the city was reduced to rubble, and its people, literally, chopped into pieces. Later in the film, a Japanese soldier discovers the hat of a comrade placed on the head of a Chinese boy. George explains that the orphan 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 the historical record shows that the Japanese soldier had no qualms about aiming their guns at children.But let's be fair. Along with the HBO documentary "Nanking", the story of 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 their own survival, George Hogg is deserving of the accolades that his self-evident heroism brought him. But just in case the audience fails to recognize what this man accomplished, Mrs. Wang, an opium dealer, tells George how wonderful he is. Lee(Radha Mitchell) seconds that emotion. She had her doubts when the nurse assigned George to the orphanage. And then there's the real-life survivors who offer their testimony about his greatness during the closing credits.The film never proves that the Japanese are savages, but Lee was in Nanking during the siege. If the audience knew about the nature of the attack, Lee's disproportionate anger over George's redecorating efforts on her living quarters, which inspires the nurse to storm out of the orphanage, would make this British woman completely insufferable.The less you know about "The Rape of Nanking", the better.