The epithet ''based on a true story'' has got to be a film director's dream. It's so freeing. It virtually invites self-indulgence. You can't argue with a true story, after all, because ''It's true!'' Like Titanic. Fact, in the movies, is a lot like a license.

It allows a director like Roger Spottiswoode, whose The Children of Huang Shi is based on the real adventures of George Hogg, to forgo a lot to get to the nut of the story -- Hogg's arrival as a reporter in 1938 Nanjing, his narrow escape from the invading Japanese and his struggle to get 60 Chinese orphans over a treacherous mountain range.

Hogg is worthy of our attention, but whether he did anything to deserve Spottiswoode's soft-shell treatment seems unlikely. The script by James MacManus and Jane Hawksley follows a Point A to Point D storytelling continuum, and Radha Mitchell's performance as self-trained nurse and opium addict Lee Pearson is the kind of demi-operatic display that usually requires a rose in the teeth, Liebestraume on the piano and a cameo appearance by Chloe Sevigny. As it is, we cannot argue with Lee Pearson because she is true. We think.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who apparently shoehorned Hogg in before his reign as Henry Tudor (on The Tudors), has never quite found the right role for his arresting good looks. But Chow Yun-Fat is charming as Chen Hansheng, a Chinese partisan who may not like Chiang Kai-shek, but really hates the Japanese. And Michelle Yeoh is her usual smoky self, as a combination madam and retailer in old Nanjing. Really, though, the best thing about Children is the cinematography by Zhao Xiaoding (Hero,House of Flying Daggers), which is so distracting, because it so greatly outclasses the rest of the movie.

Cast: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Radha Mitchell, Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh

Director: Roger Spottiswoode

Screenwriters: Jane Hawksley, James MacManus

Producers: Arthur Cohn, Wieland Schulz-Keil

A Sony Pictures Classics release. Running time: 114 minutes. Disturbing, with violent content. In Miami-Dade: Palace; in Palm Beach: Shadowood.

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