[Movie 285 / Day 302]
RED CLIFF is set in ancient China and tells the story of the famous Battle of Red Cliffs. It’s a pretty involved story line, and the Western version I watched is almost half the length of the Chinese release. The basic plot involves a calculating Prime Minister, Cao Cao, who convinces Emperor Han that he should declare war on the kingdoms of Xu in the west of China and Wu in the south. He tells the Emperor that this is the only way to unite China.
After amassing an enormous army, Cao Cao attacks Wu, driving the people from the land and killing many. In order to fight back, the leader of Wu, Sun Quan calls on the Xu warlord Liu Bei for help and the two join forces to fight the common enemy.
The troops of Xu and Wu are hopelessly outnumbered by Cao Cao’s army, but the brilliance of a Wu strategist, Zhou Yu, allows them to counter Cao Cao’s attacks effectively and ultimately, turn Cao Cao’s weaknesses against him.
It’s pretty long and there is a fair amount of backstory to be covered before we finally get to Red Cliff and start seeing some cool battles – and the scenes with the warlords deliberating with Zhou Yu are pretty tense, as the strategist tries to guess what Cao Cao’s next move will be. Some of the battle scenes are brilliant and a couple of John Woo’s trademarks are easily spotted (no double 9mm in this one obviously, but Woo replaces them with a character jumping sideways while brandishing a pair of swords!). In fact, when we get into some of the battles, there are spurts of CGI blood and it’s quite intense, countering the lengthy dialogue-led scenes nicely.
If you like John Woo and you like epic battle scenes, you could do a lot worse than check out RED CLIFF.
Rating: 
[ IMDB rating: 7.2 / 10 | IMDB link | Running time: 148 mins ]