Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Jonathan Rhys Meyers | ... | George Hogg | |
Radha Mitchell | ... | Lee Pearson | |
Yun-Fat Chow | ... | Jack (Chen Hansheng) | |
Michelle Yeoh | ... | Mrs. Wang | |
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Guang Li | ... | Shi-Kai |
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Ji Lin | ... | Horse Rider |
Matthew Walker | ... | Andy Fisher | |
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Anastasia Kolpakova | ... | Duschka |
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Ping Su | ... | Eddie Wei |
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Imai Hideaki | ... | Japanese Officer |
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Seiichiro Hashimoto | ... | Urbane Japanese Officer (as Sciichiro Hashimoto) |
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Shinichi Takashima | ... | Hostile Kempetai Officer |
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Xing Mang | ... | Young Communist |
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Ruixiang Zhu | ... | Japanese Officer II |
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Yuelong Fang | ... | Rou Ding |
People thrown into an unexpected and desperate situation discover their capacity for love and responsibility. A young Englishman, George Hogg, comes to lead sixty orphaned boys on a journey of over 500 perilous miles across the snow-bound Liu Pan Shan mountains to safety on the edge of the Mongolian desert. And how, in doing so, he comes to understand the meaning of courage. During his journey, Hogg learns to rely on the support of Chen, the leader of a Chinese communist partisan group who becomes his closest friend. He soon finds himself falling in love with Lee, a recklessly brave Australian nurse whom war has turned into an unsentimental healer on horseback. Along the way Hogg befriends Madame Wang, an aristocratic survivor who has also been displaced by war, who helps the young Englishman, his friends and their sixty war orphans make their way across mountain and desert regions to a place of safety near the western end of the Great Wall of China. Written by Anonymous
This is like a Schindler's List for the Chinese. It's a war story that focuses not on the terror and pain and atrocities, but on the good a person can do and it is based on a true story. Something that needs to be told and remembered.
That being said, was it a well told story? Yes and no. It seemed terribly fragmented to me, moving from one scene to the other with the speed of a bullet. It is hard to "feel" the individual character changes because it all happens so fast. Of course, I couldn't expect a two hour movie to slowly tell a story that spanned many months in real life, but still. You can't show two friends entering China, then one dying and completely omit him from the story from then on because you don't have time. On the other hand, I hardly see the subject as appropriate for a mini series.
Bottom line: good story, good acting, watch it if you feel the need for a good war time drama that inspires.