`China Cry' Works, But Discreetly

XX 1/2 ``China Cry,'' with Russell Wong, Julia Nickson-Soul, James Shigeta, France Nuyen, Philip Tan. Written and directed by James F. Collier. Aurora, Gateway, Grand Alderwood, King, Renton Village. ``PG-13'' - Parental guidance advised, due to language, violence.

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An incredible true story and a strong central performance carry this first feature film from Trinity Broadcasting Network, a Christian media organization.

In the role of a spoiled Shanghai schoolgirl whose family was irrevocably changed by the Japanese invasion of 1941 and then the communist revolution of 1949, Julia Nickson-Soul is immediately engaging. Her spirited performance covers nearly a decade in the life of Sung Neng Yee, who changed her name to Nora Lam after she escaped to Hong Kong in 1958. She later became a California evangelist and now lives in San Jose.

Yet for all the conviction the actress brings to the part, this $6.6 million production is surprisingly tame as both a religious statement and as a love story (Russell Wong plays her sensitive but tentative husband), and its occasionally vivid portrait of the brutal excesses of communist China raises more questions than it can answer in 107 minutes.

The capable writer-director, James F. Collier, was responsible for most of the religious dramas produced by Billy Graham's now-defunct World Wide Pictures, including ``The Prodigal'' (which was filmed in Seattle in 1982) and ``The Hiding Place,'' a well-acted 1975 film starring Julie Harris and Eileen Heckart as Dutch Christians who hid Jews from the Nazis in Amsterdam.

At their worst, the Graham-sponsored films turned into sermons and bald promotions for his crusades. Perhaps as a reaction to years of working with that formula, Collier now bends over backwards not to turn the film into an advertisement for Christianity. The result is a reasonably commercial film that won't embarrass non-Christians, though it's not likely to win many converts, either.

The story turns on a miracle - a flash of lightning that Nora Lam claims saved her from a communist firing squad - but Collier does so little to dramatize the incident that it has almost no impact. Clearly whatever happened had a profound effect on her, and it's indicated that she wasn't the only one who was inspired by it. But Collier doesn't seem to want to deal with this central event, or the reactions of the communists who spared her life.

Fortunately, there's enough of a compelling story here to make the rest of ``China Cry'' quite watchable. And Collier does make the most of the irony that the communists more or less turned this lapsed Presbyterian into a confirmed Christian by tormenting her about her background in missionary schools. She rebelled by embracing a religion she'd been taught as a child that, in her words, ``didn't stick.''