A war hero to orphans in China

A decade ago, director Roger Spottiswoode read James MacManus’ screenplay for “The Children of Huang Shi.” He became obsessed with bringing the period drama to the big screen. And his interest never wavered, though it took him eight years to begin filming in China. The movie opens here Friday.

“We developed it for four years and weren’t able to get it going,” says Spottiswoode, whose credits include “Under Fire” and “Tomorrow Never Dies.” “I bought the rights off the original producers and found other producers to help get it made.” He also brought in another screenwriter, Jane Hawksley.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers (“Elvis,” “The Tudors”) stars as George Hogg, a young Englishman and Oxford graduate who goes to China in the late 1930 when the country is being invaded by the Japanese. Working as a reporter, he witnesses the massacre of some 200 Chinese men, women and children in Nanjing. Then he is injured, and a self-trained Red Cross nurse (Radha Mitchell) recommends that he recovers at a place called Huang Shi.

Upon arriving, he discovers that it’s a vermin-infested, abandoned school that is home to 60 orphan boys. Initially reluctant to stay, Hogg bonds with the youngsters and winds up changing their lives.

When the children’s safety is jeopardized by the encroaching Japanese troops, Hogg leads them on an arduous journey to the city of Shandan on the western end of the Gobi Desert.

“He came from an interesting background of pacifist parents,” Spottiswoode says. “He does the right thing and ends up changing so many lives -- and he changes. I just found it a wonderful and interesting story.

“And at a time when people are going off to other countries with guns and telling them how they should live . . . and deciding that many of them are evil, he had a different approach. He went to a foreign place and became like them and found out what they had in common.”

Though Hogg died in Shandan in 1945, the surviving orphans remember him well, Spottiswoode says. In fact, every year they reunite to celebrate his life at his memorial in Shandan.

Several of the orphans, now in their late 60s and 70s, are interviewed about Hogg during the film’s end credits.

-- Susan King