Profiles in courage

Director Roger Spottiswoode brings an untold story of atrocity and bravery into focus with the powerful 'The Children of Huang Shi'

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Although his early protector, "Jack" Chen (Chow Yun-Fat), is a Communist engineer and soldier, Hogg doesn't pick up a gun and join his ranks. Instead, Hogg becomes a deft negotiator, especially when he trades with a clever Huang Shi merchant, Mrs. Wang (played with deep knowingness and dignity by Michelle Yeoh, who first acted for Spottiswoode in the Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies).

He soon learns that a heroic self-taught nurse, Lee Pearson (Radha Mitchell), who treated him for wounds from Japanese bullets, was the one who suggested that Chen send Hogg to Huang Shi. There he recuperates, learns Chinese, and becomes orphanage headmaster by default. He teaches something of value to hungry and often traumatized youngsters.

For most of the movie, Chen, Pearson and Hogg form a platonic triangle: the Communist soldier and the nurse, one-time lovers, are content to be best friends. And while Pearson and Hogg strike sparks at first, they don't want to complicate their lives - or to unpack their psychological baggage. They become lovers only after they've witnessed each other's weaknesses and strengths in full; that's one of the most adult and moving aspects of the picture.

Mitchell (J.M. Barrie's wife in Finding Neverland) has never been more vivid, veracious or appealing than as a nurse who learns she can't hide or run away from her cravings and needs. And Yun-Fat evokes a warm, wise earthiness that's the perfect opposite to Rhys Meyers' visionary questing.

At the orphanage, three characters emerge to define the plight of the children: a driven student who inspires Hogg's belief that he can teach his pupils English; a cryptic farming lad who turns eloquent only when he instructs Hogg in the traditional rites of planting; and a scary-eyed hard case who appears to have walked out of Lord of the Flies.

The last one puts Hogg through a violent hazing that's almost as frightening as the Japanese assaults. Working with this many children would challenge most directors, and working with this many children who also speak a foreign language would utterly defeat them. But Spottiswoode captures them at their most expressive and spontaneous, and traces their individual fates with psychological acuity.