I’d only heard about John Woo’s Red Cliff recently in which epic and expensive were used to describe it, as well as the 4 hour length of the movie. However, I didn’t expect that Hollywood would agree to go ahead and show a straight 4 hour film in one go. My friend Alyssa, was going to go review it for an online mag so I tagged along, still recovering from cold/flu/sinus where I spent the whole day in bed watching Simpsons re-runs, Arachnophobia, Prince Caspian and Species. Fresh from the good trash, I was ready to be injected in some foreign, action packed John Woo style film. I was a bit disappointed that that the movie had been recut to 2.5hrs from the 4 hours of footage that was realised in China. In China, they had released Red Cliff in 2 parts with the each part being released a year apart.
This was the advanced preview screening of Red Cliff on a Sunday arvo in Newtown. Because of that, I’d expected that the cinema would be empty. Running late from trying to gulp down a dumpling soup lunch, the girl at Dendy warned that it was very full in there. So much for my expectation, we ended sitting 3 seats from the front. Because of our lateness we managed to miss 5 minutes of the movie to arrive at the battle between Lui Bei’s army and Cao Cao’s army. I sat there for the first ten minutes trying to absorb the action that was bursting out of the screen. The action was very very bloody, but unrealistic. I’ve known Woo’s directorial style from his previous Hollywood outings Face/Off and Mission Impossible 2 and his style of action is a slow, close up shot of the action. It provides another worldly element to the action. And this is what stops Red Cliff from becoming a gritty, full out bloody assualt.
Just to sum the movie up in a few sentences, Red Cliff is a war epic, based on actual events at the end of the Han Dynasty in China. This war paved way to the next era called the Three Kingdoms. Cao Cao, a Northern warlord, has conquered many lands in the North except the south land. The opening battle scenes are Cao Cao’s attempt to capture Lui Bei’s land, a southern warlord. Realizing that they are on the cusp of a defeat, Lui Bei’s army flees, and allies with Sun Quan, the emperor of the South. Together, their army totals 50,000 men, a very small army compared with the 800,000 men that Cao Cao has taken with him for this assault. The all out battle takes place at Red Cliff.
What I particularly enjoyed about this film is the humour that Woo chooses to weave the story with. It is humour that is cheesy, exaggerated but yet subtle. It gives the film a light hearted treatment, but this is not particularly bad in a war epic. With the 2.5 hour version, I felt that the story line was rushed, and some shots were not established in the previous shots which made some scenes jump out of nowhere or happen suddenly. This is very slight though, but noticeably to a very keen eye. I came home and tried to get a hold of the full 4 hour version. After watching the 4 hour version, the shots that were cut made the 2.5 hour movie feel full. Woo had cut a lot of the shots that characterised the main leads and showed them in a different light. The characters are given a full rounded treatment with likeable, human traits. We saw very little of Cao Cao’s army in the shortened version but more is explored in the full version. Any chance to see more of Tony Leung I would thoroughly recommend the full 4 hour version.
