Stars:
* 1/2
Rating: R for violence,
bloodshed and mature themes
Run
Time: 2
hours, 5 minutes
Director
Roger Spottiswoode preys on the heart in this ill-conceived weeper that just
won’t say die.
Shanghai
1937 is an enclave of luxurious sophistication but in distant Nanking a
revolution is raging. Every foreign journalist worth his salt is clamoring to
get to the front lines.
Eager
beaver English shutterbug George Hogg (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) maneuvers himself
to action’s center stage but doesn’t like what he finds; shocking atrocities
followed by a brutal arrest and exile to a decrepit orphanage a la “Lord of the
Flies”.
Earnest
Hogg, the ultimate fish out of water, flounders in his new environs,
reluctantly warming to his young charges while making goo-goo eyes at do-gooder
American nurse Lee Pearson (Radha Mitchell). The boys give George the business
(as boys will) but he perseveres, building trust and basketball hoops to a
crescendo of swelling violins.
Chinese
veterans Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-Fat lend authenticity but little else. Martial
artist Yeoh would be better served dealing swift kicks to the head and Yun-Fat
needs work on his English consonants. Melodrama rises to a fevered pitch when
Hogg and his sixty-odd orphans are forced to hoof it over the Silk Road “Sound
of Music” style. Blech.
Trashy
histrionics aside there are some soft spots for those with a weakness for
cross-cultural banalities and humanitarian heroics swaddled in cliché. I heard
gentle weeping in the back rows so maybe I’m jaded.
Script is
unfortunately laughable; a crying shame as more meaningful discourse could have
put this lifeless historical dud on the map.