Always on the edge in 'Cliff'
REVIEW | Highest grossing film in China edited down from five hours for USA version
Tom Skilling would have been a powerful general in third century China, for if one knew the vagaries of the wind and the fog and the thunder in those times, one would have enjoyed invaluable strategic advantages on the fields of battle.
This is one of the lessons learned in John Woo's sprawling, awesome, confounding and sweeping epic "Red Cliff," a film that's heavy on the thrilling battle sequences but somewhat lacking in dramatic fire.
(Magnolia Pictures/AP)
Zhou Yu Tony Leung
Zhuge Liang Takeshi Kaneshiro
Cao Cao Zhang Fengyi
Liu Bei You Yong
Sun Quan Chang Chen
Magnet Releasing presents a film directed by John Woo. Written by Woo, Chan Khan, Kuo Cheng and Sheng Heyu. Running time: 148 minutes. Rated R (for epic warfare). Opening today at Landmark Century.
The lack of character depth and backstory is undoubtedly a result of a made-for-USA editing job that cuts the two-part, five-hour Asian version into a two-and-a-half hour movie. (The original has surpassed "Titanic" as the highest-grossing film in China.) You think they were going to leave the spurting blood and the flying arrows on the cutting-room floor in favor of extended dialogue about honor and bravery and patience and love? Not hardly.
"Red Cliff" is filled with huge-scale battle scenes brimming with dazzling visuals, some amazing stuntwork and first-rate CGI effects. There's some great hand-to-hand combat, but Woo is perhaps most impressive when delivering long and medium shots that give us a football fan's view of the battlefield as the rebel warlords execute ingenious strategies in which thousands of soldiers act in concert to quell the enemy through elaborate trickery.
Woo and his writers have crafted a script that takes factual elements of legendary battles from the Han Dynasty circa 200 A.D. and mixes in fiction from the 14th century historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. In the opening sequence, the ambitiously ruthless (or is he ruthlessly ambitious?) Gen. Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi) persuades Emperor Xiam to authorize Cao Cao to take his 800,000 troops south to confront the so-called rebel armies led by Liu Bei (You Yong) and Sun Quan (Chang Chen). This might lead one to surmise Cao Cao's the good guy, and Liu Bei and Sun Quan are the villains, but as the tale unravels, we see it's quite the opposite. Cao Cao's the kind of warlord who doesn't hesitate to execute civilians. And when legions of his own troops succumb to typhoid, he leaves their corpses to be discovered by the enemy, in the hopes they'll contract the disease.
After Cao Cao's forces crush the beleaguered Liu Bei, the latter's generals enlist the brilliant strategist Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) to form a partnership with Sun Quan via Sun Quan's viceroy Zhou Yu. If you're having trouble keeping up with all the players, you'll probably encounter that problem from time to time during the actual viewing experience -- but it won't really matter because you're always just minutes away from another kick-ass battle sequence.
Although there is a Helen of Troy-type triangle at play here, perhaps the most fully realized relationship in the truncated version of "Red Cliff" is the friendship between Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu. They bond in a jam session that's pure poetry, musically and visually. As Zhou Yu, Woo veteran Tony Leung ("Hard-Boiled," "A Bullet to the Head") has the biggest star power in an impressive cast.
The great battles re-created in "Red Cliff" are well known to hundreds of millions of Chinese, but even if you don't know from East Wu and Tortoise Formations, you're no doubt familiar with the time-honored cinematic story of vastly outnumbered forces outwitting, outlasting and outfighting a seemingly invincible foe.
In "Red Cliff," taking advantage of a heavy fog or a shift in the wind can make all the difference. It doesn't hurt if your team includes warriors who can whirl and twirl and slice and dice in the classic John Woo fashion.