Red Cliff 《赤壁》

 7/10

Movie:

Red Cliff (2008) 

Like Mummy 3, I had pretty muted expectations for Red Cliff 《赤壁》.    I knew it was going to be long and going to go at a very slow pace, since its the first part of a two parter. And since its based on the ' Three Kingdoms' period of Chinese history and the associated 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms' Chinese epic, it would have 900+ characters and a very complicated story....

...and IT WAS ALL THOSE THINGS....

I would recommend before you go see this film that you brush up on your Three Kingdoms... I really only knew the characters of General Guan Yu (because everyone who does wushu knows the Guan Dao) and Zhang Fei (because I visited his tomb when I took a cruise through the three gorges back in 2002 before they finished the dam... here's a REALLY old picture as proof)

So at the start it was a bit confusing figuring out who was who and why some people were battling other people... but eventually the frenetic pace slows down and you can figure out whats going on (mostly). :-P

I won't try too explain the storyline -- its quite complicated... basically the Northern Chinese Army is trying to conquer kingdoms in the southern part of China, and the southern guys have to unite to defend themselves... leading up to a big show down between the armies.

Of course the cast is really all-star... Tony Leung, Kaneshiro Takeshi, Chang Chen, Zhang Fengyi, Zhao Wei, Lin Chi-ling etc. The performances are all pretty good (except Nakamura Shido, is way too obviously a Japanese guy). The sets are nice (and expensive), costumes are nice too of course. the CG is... adequate. :-P

Lin Chi-ling, totally worth it! ;-)

One thing that bothered me a bit was how Zhang Fei and Guan Yu are presented as almost comical exaggerations whereas everyone else is played pretty realistically... I think this mythical exaggeration is from the 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms' representation of their characters... but felt a bit out of place next to relatively straight characters everyone else was portraying.

As the movie the movie went on, the tension and drama rise and I found myself enjoying the film more. I particularly enjoyed the discussions of strategy between the warring sides... but maybe that's just me. I guess one other thing that bugged me was that despite all the strategy and all that, it seems like things always end up being about the main guys running around on the battlefield killing 90% of the enemy single handedly... :-P

As you can guess since this is a two parter, the first part is mostly set up and ends in with a bit of a cliff hanger ending(no pun intended).

I'll give it a 7/10 pending how the 2nd part turns out. I suggest seeing it on the big screen if possible though. Its still showing in a lot of theaters. catch it before its gone. ;-)

ps if you want more media:

all the posters for the movie

an insane number of stills from the film