Review of Red Cliff (2008) by Aaron N — 27 Nov 2009

Liu Bei: Truth and illusion are often disguised as each other, Cao Cao likes to play this game, both with friends and foes.

Action master John Woo returns to his native China to direct an action epic capturing one of China's most famous historical war stories. The film is an amazing accomplishment in terms of how its action is captured in the way that Woo is known for as a filmmaker. All of the elements of his signature style are present here, and combining that with a good cast headlined by Tony Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro, the film is a well made historical action epic.

In 208 A.D., in the final days of the Han Dynasty, shrewd Prime Minster Cao Cao convinced the fickle Emperor Han the only way to unite all of China was to declare war on the kingdoms of Xu in the west and East Wu in the south. Thus began a military campaign of unprecedented scale, led by the Prime Minister, himself. Left with no other hope for survival, the kingdoms of Xu and East Wu formed an unlikely alliance. The ruler of Wu, Sun Quan, calls on the rival warlord Liu Bei for help, but their two armies are still badly outnumbered. Numerous battles of strength and wit ensued, both on land and on water, eventually culminating in the battle of Red Cliff. During the battle, two thousand ships were burned, and the course of Chinese history was changed forever.

Now, in China this film was actually two movies, with a total running time of five hours. For the American release, the film has been streamlined into one film and down to two and a half hours, complete with narration to help ease audiences into the story much better known to the Chinese. To this, I have to give credit to the studio, as this movie flows very well, with a much leaner presentation of the story, with enough dramatic arc to make it very compelling, while still leaving in all the awesome action that John Woo is very adept at handling.

With all of the different characters interwoven into this story, I was taking my time in really getting into the film above an action standpoint, but once I did, this movie really took off. There are a lot of good actors present here, and many of them leave memorable impressions to keep you very interested in where this story will go.

Of course, the main draw is to see John Woo go all "John Woo" on the action scenes, and he freaking delivers. Use of slow motion, explosions, well handled sense of scale, appropriate mix of effects, dual wielded weapons, Mexican standoffs, awesome stylized, often balletic sequences of action; all of things are present, and yes Woo even fits in some doves for good measure. There is action all over this movie, with two main sequences, which includes the fantastically epic climatic battle that lasts a good half hour and took over a year to get prepared for during production.

The movie also manages to bring Woo's sense of melodrama concerning a couple characters, as well as his sense for overly-beautiful cinematography to keep the tone straight for his type of films. Its certainly another staple of Woo, but here he is doing it on a much more epic scale, which was necessary for getting one of China's most famous stories done right.

A very well handled movie that delivers handsomely on its epic action.

Cao Cao: This rag tag group of warriors mustn't be underestimated.