Review of Red Cliff (2008) by Angela L — 07 Jun 2014

Before there was Michael Bay, Zack Snyder, before Quentin Tarantino was old enough to even wipe his ass there was John Woo. No director has been as influential in defining our action movie vocabulary. That slick, kinetic style that we come to now expect was pioneered by John Woo films.

He fled Hollywood and went back to his roots. I was so excited to see this movie because I haven't seen a Woo film in a long time, and I guess, Red Cliff is a Chinese version of the Sword and Sandal epic of Hollywood.

It stars my two favorite, the unspeakably handsome Takashi Kaneshiro and the soulful Tony Leung.

The story is clever enough involving a metaphorical chess game of war and battle: check and checkmate. Once that plot fully reveals itself it's rather engaging.

My reservations with John Woo in the past has been his female characters. They've always been accessories in his past movie. Red Cliff has two women who at least contribute unfolding action. Nice evolution.

The few problems I have with this film are the cheap CGI. Some of the composites aren't fully baked into the scene and it looks very obviously there was either not enough time and/or money for the renderings to fully bake.

The western style orchestral music didn't seem to fit with the story and setting. It was distracting and rather than adding to the emotion and anticipation it took me out of the movie.

Lastly, the editing style bored on the stale. Most obviously was a montage at the beginning of the film. It was just darn cheese.

Other than that, if your interested in exploring something new why not.