Chinese director Zhang Yimou has given us a movie set during the brutal Japanese invasion of Nanjing in 1937. It's a Sino-American co-production and the resulting film looks and tastes like Hollywood-style hokum, although it is heartfelt and watchable. Christian Bale plays John Miller, a boozy and cynical westerner who takes refuge in a convent housing a gaggle of terrified schoolgirls and a bevy of prostitutes. He dresses in priest's robes for a drunken joke, but then finds redemption in actually protecting the women disguised. Bale is forthright and emotional in the role, and with a hint of boyish vulnerability, even reminds us of his 13-year-old self in Spielberg's Empire of the Sun.