Red Cliff is truly an epic film. A cast of thousands, which spectacular camerawork, an interesting true historical subject with first-rate actors and arguably one of the greatest action directors of all time, all on the same project. Made by the great Chinese action-director John Woo, Red Cliff is the visualization of one of his greatest ambitions, and boy, does he ever. Aside from a very long running length (146 minutes) and some overlong exposition on the characters (not totally out of line for a Chinese movie, especially given the subject matter), this movie will appeal to almost everyone. Great action, intrigue, even some chaste romance and modern commentary on old ways are all present here.
For those of you who don't know Chinese history, the film is based on a period of Chinese history that has been called The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a period from approximately 220-280 AD. At this point, there Han Dyansty was riddled with corruption and China as we know it today was broken in three kingdoms, roughly corresponding to nothern, western and southern China today. Although titularly under the Han emperor, this was a period of great civil war under several warlords. This period of time birthed some of China's greatest and most revered heroes. The movie is based around one particularly famous battle, the Battle of Red Cliff, where Chinese heroes Leu Bei, Zhou Yu, Sun Quan and Zhuge Li'ang fought with an army of 50-80,000 men against and defeated the Han's tyrannical prime minister Cao Cao, who had an army of several hundred thousand, which brought a brief moment of peace in an otherwise extremely violent period in Chinese history.
This is not an action movie with Lord of the Rings epic battles, although there are two major ones in the film. This is a movie about war, and specifically Chinese style of war, based on precepts fron Sun Tzu's The Art Of War. It is a movie about strategy, tactics, diplomacy, spycraft and finally combat. Zhuge Li'ang, in particular, was very young, but a genius in wartime strategy. The movie examines his plans and tactics in depth, from the use of deception, to understanding the enemy and the battlefield to the importance of improvisation. It is a masterful telling of all what goes into war. The cast is first rate, with Tony Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro as particular standouts as Zhou Yu and Zhuge Li'ang respectively. They inhabit their roles quite well and are especially believable, but the entire cast is a knockout. There is not a bad performance in the bunch. The action scenes are way over the top, but this is to be expected from John Woo, who has done films like The Killer, Hard Boiled, Full Contact, A Bullet In The Head, Mission: Impossible 2 and Face/Off. He has raised violence to an art form, with his closest contemporary being Sam Peckinpah, who directed The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, Cross of Iron, Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid and Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia. Both men subscribe to the "ballet of death," where violent action scenes are slowed down to prolong the carnage, resulting in a macabre but strangely beautiful dance of death. This is definitely the style over substance style that has become so popular today in such things as anything directed by Zack Snyder (300, The Man of Steel, Watchmen) and such TV shows as Spartacus, which are entertaining, but ultimately soulless. This is usually what happens when lesser hacks try to emulate masters. It is ultimately a shell underneath.
The only real complaints I have with the film are how over-the-top the battle sequences are, particularly when a particular hero is focused on. They become supermen in the face of overwhelming odds and can do literally superhuman feats. Now, this is nothing new in Chinese films (Bruce Lee, Jet Li, Jackie Chan all being examples) or western films for that matter, especially when dealing with revered heroes, but sometimes it really strains credulity and becomes unwittingly funny. This took me out of the moment and reminded me I was watching a film. I also had an issue with the endless exposition, setting up characters. It was actually archetyping them, making them too noble and too easily pigeonholed into their historical characterizations to an almost comic level. However, I did like the story of Sun Shangxiang, the tomboyish little sister of Xiao Qiao, Zhou Yu's beautiful wife and a Chinese Helen, as it was said it was because of Cao Cao's desire for her that he started the war in the first place. Anyway, Sun Shangxiang refused to be the wilting flower and went undercover as a spy into Cao Cao's camp for her brother-in-law and actually participated in the battle. It provides some interesting, albeit modern commentary on how women are treated in society. Finally, the movie is a tad long (it was cut down for American release), but these are only minor complaints to me. This is a great film and is rightly considered a master's masterpiece.
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