Sixty orphaned Chinese boys attempt a perilous journey across the Liu Pan Shan mountains into the Mongolian desert to escape the Japanese invasion. Leading them is a young Englishman named George Hogg (Johnathan Rhys Meyers) with the help of Chen Hansheng (Chow Yun-Fat), the leader of a Chinese partisan group; Lee (Radha Mitchell), an Australian woman who provides medical assistance; and Madame Wang (Michelle Yeoh), an aristrocrat also fleeing for her life.
by lyn_july
on 05/05/2008 1 of 2 people found this review helpful
What I loved most: Sacrifices For the needy
What I really hated: Cruel and killing by the Japanese
This is really very touching movie. It stated - based on a true story. I cried a few times when I was in the cinema watching these. It really touched my heart and I believed to some others viewers too..Those Japanese are really very cruel. Killing like nobody business. But this white guy, George Hogg was willing to sacrifice his life for those orphans even though going through near death experience.He loves the kids like his own, althou they didnt accept him at first, the kids can only speaks chinese and do not know how to speaks or understand English.. however, he have the patience to learn to talk in chinese by himself with some of the kids helps and shows them and teaches them the value of life.. I rated this movie as 5 stars. Great movie
Michelle Yeoh a drug dealer? Radha Mitchell a hot Aussie nurse? Chow Yun Fat a sharp-talking communist? The Rape Of Nanking never seemed more commercial than it does in "Escape From Huang Shi". Casual explanations, often partisan though not offensive, are given to found the plot for the epic. Yet, "Escape" has managed to do just that - escape from the formulaic tedium of war epics to concentrate on the more human story of young orphans who were saved by an outstanding Englishman during the Japanese occupation in China.
This side of the world where the Chinese diaspora is only in their fourth or fifth generation, that corresponding WWII horror still applies to whoever remembers stories from their elders about the Japanese in Malaysia. It is perhaps a little sad that the regional decision makers have decided to rename "Children Of Huang Shi" (by which it is known internationally) to "Escape From" under the pretext of perhaps selling it as an action movie. Idealistically speaking, it cheapens the plight of George Hogg and his sixty-something orphans who must have shown more courage in braving the cold mountains than studio people who have to resort to such measures to make a little more.
On the film proper, "Escape From Huang Shi" sure manages to escape the obligation of adding depth to its characters. People like Chow Yun Fat's faction leader and Michelle Yeoh's opium dealer are only briefly explored; yet you feel that director Roger Spottiswoode intended it exactly so. It is the interaction between George Hogg and the wee ones, together with the luscious photography of China, that makes "Escape From Huang Shi" an honest movie that doesn't ask too much from the viewer.
Of course, as censorship issues remain unsettled, we will forever be left wondering what was it exactly that was cut when the credits had the real-life children (now elderly men) talking about Hogg fondly. Something too politically provocative for Malaysians, perhaps? There must also be a Radha Mitchell sex scene somewhere but all that isn't really important now.
While lecturing the six-foot Oxford graduate, a single Chow Yun Fat line about The Bitter Sea and how the Chinese people see themselves was already worth the watch. With solid performances all round, "Escape From Huang Shi" might scratch when it should have cut. However the bruises still told the tale and there is enough dirt on Jonathan Rhys Meyers' pretty face to believe that it was all real.
