Film Reviews

Red Cliff

• Rating:
• Director: John Woo
• Starring: Takeshi Kaneshiro
• Details: China / 148mins (15A).

Scaled down from a brain-melting and ass-numbing 5 hours to a respectable - but still meaty - 2½, Red Cliff, the most expensive movie in China's history and John Woo's first since 2003's Paycheck, sees the director back to what he does best: being cool.
Set in 3rd century China, a powerful warlord-turned-prime minister, Cao Cao (Zhang), takes control of the country, crushing all who stand before him. Two opposing armies - a northern army under Sun Quan (Chang Chen) and a southern army under Liu Bei (Yong Yiu) - form a tentative alliance and plan to make a stand in the area known as Red Cliff on the Yangtze River. Vastly outnumbered by the advancing army, China's hopes of freedom from tyranny fall to two men: the brilliant strategist Zhuge Liang (Kaneshiro) and the gutsy viceroy Zhou Yu (Leung).
Adapted from the 14th century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Red Cliff seems to have more in common with Sun Tzu's The Art of War than its source material. The latter leads to meticulously thought out strategies before unleashing brilliantly choreographed battle scenes involving casts of thousands. These sequences, which make up most of the running time, are just cool, cool, cool: think the Battle of Helm's Deep in The Two Towers stretched out over 2½ hours and you're someway imagining the spectacle that is Red Cliff. Plot and character be damned (we're left to assume that those two elements made up most of the 5 hour version), this is a right old ding-dong of an epic battle movie that will leave any audience breathless. But a breather is needed between the flying of spears, arrows, and bodies and this is where Woo brings in the art of tea making. Tea? Tea plays a big part in Red Cliff - it isn't entirely clear why on first viewing, but if forced to guess; it outlines the difference between the good guys' fondness for culture and the bad guys' lack of.
Despite the fun and the absolute lunacy unfolding on screen, there are some dodgy elements that drag the exhibition down from its lofty perch. Those tea scenes tend to drag, some of the acting is below par, it's hard to tell whose army is whose a times, there are too many names and faces to remember, and the English narration jars with the Chinese language. But you're not paying in to see these - if you want blood, guts and things been blown up, Red Cliff has enough of those to keep you giddy.

Review by Gavin Burke