Ray Pride

The funniest confession from director Roger Spottiswoode ("Under Fire," "Tomorrow Never Dies," "Shake Hands With The Devil") in a recent conversation about his career was about Chow Yun Fat, a co-star of this period epic about a crusade to save children during Japan's invasion of China in the late 1930s: there were times he had to tell Chow, who shows up intermittently as a resistance fighter, even when he was in the deep background of a shot, not to smoke so charismatically. While not stodgy, "The Children of Huang Shi" is an old-fashioned melodrama, where gestures and postures and epic landscapes (shot with gorgeous sweep by Zhao Xiaoding, of "House of Flying Daggers," "Curse of the Golden Flower") carry the story rather than the script. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is the English war journalist who finds a mission in saving sixty orphans and Radha Mitchell (who might more fruitfully be paired against Chow, sharing as she does the same sort of movie-intense level gaze). The East bests West. With Michelle Yeoh. 125m.

"The Children of Huang Shi" opens Friday.

(2008-06-03)

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