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Children of the Silk Road

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Editorial Review

Based on the true story of George Hogg, a young Englishman who went to Shanghai in search of journalistic adventure and became the unlikely champion of a gang of Chinese orphans, Children Of The Silk Road – the first official co-production between Australia and China – is an old-fashioned, grandiose epic of triumph over adversity; in the best and worst sense of the genre.

The film is directed with a kind of craftsman’s passion by Roger Spottiswoode (a veteran of the 007 franchise), who’s no stranger to staging action set pieces that captivate in their “movie realism”: the sense of place is palpable; physical things blow up, and the extras are marshalled in that oldschool human way. Spottiswoode’s enthusiasm for the project is undeniable, and together with cinematographer Xiaoding Zhao he’s made a handsome period piece.

Rousing story, noble characters: it should be an easy journey toward triumph and tears. Somewhere between the screenplay’s gradual pile-up of cornball clunkers and the strange casting choices, however, the film winds up taking that not-so-silky road too often travelled. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is suitably cast as the prim English journalist in search of adventure, yet once he’s dispatched to the orphanage to lead the kids, the glassy, aloof actor feels at odds with material that requires him to bond emotionally with his charges. And while Mitchell looks the part of a tough nurse, her strained American accent is so muddled as to be distracting from her performance.

The stumbles are unfortunate because Children Of The Silk Road has all the superficial trappings of a much better film. Whenever old master Chow Yun-Fat wanders in (seemingly from the set of a far jauntier picture), his clear charisma brings the film to life, a presence enough to turn an average scene into something more.

An old-fashioned epic undermined by some odd casting and a script that dips too often into cliché.

Luke Goodsell

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