If you haven’t seen a Roger Spottiswoode movie, then you would assume his filmography is one of Hollywood’s worst: It includes “Turner and Hooch,” “Air America,” and “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot!” But each of these movies is cursed with a reputation for being far worse than it actually is. None of them are good, mind you, but the touching story of Sylvester Stallone and Estelle Getty taking on black-market gun dealers is far better than it should be, and the same can be said for Mr. Spottiswoode’s latest, “The Children of Huang Shi,” which opens Friday.

George Hogg (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is a British journalist covering World War II in China whose heart aches when he encounters a school full of orphan boys. Then it melts when he meets Lee Pearson (Radha Mitchell), a hot, blond doctor with problems. Determined to do something worthwhile with his life (journalism won’t suffice), George devotes himself to ensuring the safety of the orphans in war-torn China and to figuring out how to remove Lee’s pants. By the time the credits roll — “Mission Accomplished.”

Mr. Meyers (Henry VIII on Showtime’s “The Tudors”) is a gaping nonentity at the center of this picture, portraying George as a man who must compulsively strain his neck muscles. But Ms. Mitchell (“Finding Neverland”) ably channels Cate Blanchett’s performance as Katharine Hepburn in “The Aviator,” and is compulsively fun to watch. Chow Yun-Fat tap-dances through his role as a Communist guerrilla, and Michelle Yeoh projects dignity while doing little more than modeling a succession of stylish cloaks.

The lumpy rhythms of the film’s first half feel lifelike, and there’s an earnest attempt not to reduce the orphans to an anonymous mass of Red Cross poster children, which is largely successful. Ultimately, though, the demands of the “white man saves foreigners” genre sink the film. By the time we get to the crucifixion of George in the final scenes, things have gotten so tedious that the audience can be forgiven for screaming, “Yankee, go home!”