Based on a true story and directed by the Canadian-born Roger Spottiswoode, this Australian-Chinese-German co-production is a competent if faintly disjointed matinee spectacle that suggests a gender-reversed version of the recent Somerset Maugham adaptation The Painted Veil.

Again, the setting is China in the first half of the 20th century, and the main theme is the education through suffering of a callow British protagonist. Jonathan Rhys Meyers has the starring role of George Hogg, a young reporter looking to establish his reputation during the second Sino-Japanese war.

Saved at the last minute from a firing squad, he's sent up-country to recuperate at a boarding school for orphans, presided over by a tough, chain-smoking nurse (Radha Mitchell). But before he can say goodbye and make his way to the front, she rides off over the horizon, leaving him to tend the gardens and care for the kids.

As this brief synopsis suggests, Children of the Silk Road is several films in one. For the first half-hour it's an enjoyably violent action movie; then the tone mellows and a romantic triangle develops, involving Rhys Meyers, Mitchell, and Chow Yun-Fat as an urbane Communist leader.

Finally, just as Hogg seems willing to embrace his new identity as a teacher, the war comes into the foreground once again. With the help of his comrades, he has to lead his pupils on a thousand-kilometre march to safety in a remote temple, where he makes the ultimate sacrifice for the common good.