The Children of Huang Shi Critic Reviews

If you can get past the Eurocentric focus, there are worse ways to pass the time than to see The Children of Huang Shi, if only because the glimpse into the time and place are captivating and the images are gorgeous.Read the full review

Sometimes the most compelling real-life stories make better documentaries than dramas. Such would seem to be the case with The Children of Huang Shi.Read the full review

Roger Spottiswoode directs with old-fashioned style, avoiding the saccharine with realistic depictions of a war-ravaged China (where he filmed) and a cast well versed in stiff-upper-lip.Read the full review

The best thing about "Children" is the cinematography by Zhao Xiaoding ("Hero," "House of Flying Daggers"), which is so distracting because it so out-classes the rest of the movie.Read the full review

It's like "Schindler's List" crossed with "The Sound of Music," and Roger Spottiswoode directs it in a stiff, lifeless, utterly dated style of international squareness.Read the full review

Giving Jonathan Rhys Meyers the kind of manly yet paternal role Spencer Tracy once mastered, this carefully wrought international production relates the basic story of reporter George Hogg without any vibrancy, emotion or style.Read the full review

Tells an engrossing story of a remarkable man, but nevertheless it's underwhelming. Dramatic and romantic tension never coil very tightly, as the film settles into a contented pace.Read the full review

You can be 100 percent in favor of rescuing adorable orphans from war-torn zones and still find The Children of Huang Shi a tough haul.Read the full review

What ought to be the pinnacle of the story - the orphans' odds-defying 500-mile march over snow-covered mountains toward the relative safety of the Mongolian desert - is shunted toward the end of the film and compressed to a near-footnote.Read the full review