This is How Movies Should Be Made

Boring, long, and too preachy.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

This is basically of the same genre of 70's silly Kung fu movies which were produced by kilos for brainless audience, albeit with an inflated budget and -of course lots and lots of computer animation which will make you puke.The acting is theatrical and too pretentious. They can't even act a still dead person convincingly enough. The plot is paper thin to the level of non-existence. The character development is a bad cartoon job. The war scenes are utterly silly and unrealistic looking more like unedited cuts from cheap video games. Thousands of warships on the river stick out too much as an amateur computer animation. The final straw is the scene about several generals slashing each others' throats while troops look on peacefully on the sidelines... This is beyond ludicrous.The whole project looks less of a history movie based on a true story than a regressive glorification of war which would certainly serve well in 30's Nazi Germany but too primitive if not childish in today's norms.

Firstly I'll say I've had the pleasure of seeing both versions of this film and would highly recommend watching the original version (4 ish hours) and perhaps staggering it out over 2 days as the edited version misses out several key plot points and side characters which I won't talk about for spoiler reasons. Now for the review:I love this era of Chinese history, I've studied the real history and read parts of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and have played Dynasty Warriors although it is not necessary to know much beyond a basic background knowledge before watching this. Cao Cao is basically governing through the Emperor as is puppet and is pursuing Liu Bei with his huge army as Liu Bei attempts to evacuate his followers and seek refuge with the Sun family. We get to see the forging of an alliance to stop Cao Cao and rise against him. The film details the preparation for the final battle against Cao Cao through the eyes of strategists Zhuge Liang and Zhou You. The characters are portrayed exceptionally well and I could see the quiet genius of Zhuge Liang whilst Cao Cao was portrayed as arrogant and power hungry but also ruthless and cunning. He was definitely the star of the show for me as he was exactly how I pictured he would be.The directing is brilliant from John Woo who seems much more comfortable with Chinese films, and this certainly is a Chinese film in terms of style. I found this very interesting to watch but some may be put off a bit. Obviously this film is in Chinese with English subs. This did not bother me as a quickly became engaged and forgot about it but it's worth mentioning for those who can't enjoy that.Now which part is better? I would definitely say part 2 as it is only then that the tension really begins to rise and we get to see our clever strategists at work to even the odds. The first introduces the characters really well but lacks the edge of your seat suspense of the second. But watch them both anyway as both are necessary to understand the story and both parts are honestly very good.So this film has the making of a 9/10, and it would be if it were not for one major flaw - The action! The drama and acting were all excellent in this truly epic film but the fighting scenes just broke the immersion for me. Firstly, they drag on far too long and could easily have been cut down to allow for more character development. But also they just remind me too much of Dynasty Warriors with thousands of soldiers being cut down effortlessly by just a few officers. I know the film needs main characters but it was done to the extent that it didn't feel much like an epic battlefield but instead like a scene from The Matrix or a level in Dynasty Warriors. Because of this, the tension was lessened as we know the main characters are in no real danger as they are pretty much invincible to ordinary soldiers.I can overlook this flaw and the film is very good overall and I would highly recommend it. to any fan of epic films. But I understand people disliking it for the reason I gave as if this film had been less interesting, the action would actually have ruined my experience. Luckily the rest of the film was so great is was just about able to overlook its flaws.

"Red Cliff" is a film about an episode of Chinese history little-known in the West, the Battle of the Red Cliffs in 208-209 AD, during the decline of the Han Dynasty. It is, however, a familiar story in China, being told in "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", one of the classics of Chinese literature. At this period the effective ruler of northern China was the Imperial Chancellor Cao Cao, the actual Emperor Xian being a mere puppet. The country south of the Yangtze River was controlled by two warlords, Sun Quan and Liu Bei. Despite the weakness of the ruling dynasty, the imperial army was still strong, and in 208 Cao Cao launched an invasion of southern China in order to reunite the country and to break the power of the two warlords, who formed an alliance to resist him. The defeat of the imperial army by the allies at the Battle of the Red Cliffs was eventually to lead to the fall of the dynasty and the division of China into three separate states during the so-called "Three Kingdoms period".The villain of the film is Cao Cao, portrayed as a cruel and arrogant despot. The heroes, however, are not so much Sun Quan and Liu Bei, but their subordinates, Liu Bei's adviser Zhuge Liang and Sun Quan viceroy Zhou Yu, who lead the allied armies against Cao Cao's invasion. (Given the Chinese Communist Party's determination to maintain centralised control over the whole of China, it is perhaps surprising that the film should take the side of those who in the past resisted the imposition of such control and whose victory led to a partition of the country, albeit a temporary one). The two main female characters are Sun Quan's sister Sun Shangxiang, who infiltrates Cao Cao's camp as a spy, and Zhou Yu's wife, Xiao Qiao.The film was directed by John Woo, best known to Western audiences for action dramas like "Hard Target" and "Mission Impossible 2". "Red Cliff", however, is a quite different sort of film to those. The nearest equivalent in the Western cinema would be the sort of classical epic which Hollywood used to produce in the fifties and sixties, films like "Cleopatra" and "Spartacus" which dealt with the Western contemporaries of the characters portrayed in this film. (The Han dynasty lasted from 206 BC to 220 AD, so was roughly contemporary with the Roman Empire).Like "Spartacus", "Red Cliff" juxtaposes spectacular battle scenes with scenes showing the private lives of the main characters, and like that film it deals with a seemingly unequal struggle in which the heroes are greatly outnumbered by their adversaries. "Spartacus", however, is a tragic drama which ends in the heroes' defeat, whereas here they are victorious, using guile and strategy to offset the numerical superiority of Cao Cao's army. There is a particularly memorable scene where Zhuge Liang tricks the enemy into shooting over 100,000 arrows into a fleet of boats covered in straw, thus enabling the allies to replenish their supplies of ammunition which were running dangerously low.One thing this film does have in common with some of Woo's earlier efforts is the use of highly stylised, choreographed action sequences, something exploited by other Chinese directors such as Ang Lee in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and Zhang Yimou in "House of the Flying Daggers". The difference, of course, is that whereas in those films this style of film-making was used in the context of individual hand-to-hand combat, here it is used to depict large-scale battle scenes between two great armies or navies. (The Battle of the Red Cliffs was fought both on land and on the river).I should point out that I have only seen the version of the film released in the West and which runs to some 150 minutes; Woo's original two-part version, totalling over four hours in length, was only released in Asia. I can, however, say that the shorter version is an excellent film, combining (as did the best of the Hollywood epics) brilliant spectacle with an intelligent, thoughtful script. When I reviewed Baz Luhrmann's "Australia", I concluded that the epic spirit is alive and well and living in Australia. On the basis of "Red Cliff" I can add to that conclusion "…. and in China". 8/10

On the plus side it's beautifully shot with some great stunt work and epic battle scenes. There is also some excellent CGI work, although I did feel there was a little too much reliance on this. On the minus side, I did find it VERY long and more than a little confusing, but some of the confusion may come from my unfamiliarity with the culture. Over all though, a decent enough watch with some excellent fight scenes although it does fall a little flat in a few places and it is very… very long.My Score: 7.0/10IMDb Score: 7.3/10 (based on 18,315 votes at the time of going to press).MetaScore: 73/100: (Based on 22 critic reviews provided by Metacritic.com at the time of going to press).Rotten Tomatoes 'Tomatometer' Score: 89/100 (based on 110 reviews counted at the time of going to press).Rotten Tomatoes 'Audience' Score: 78/100 (based on 20,915 user ratings counted at the time of going to press).You can find an expanded version of this review on my blog: Thoughts of a SteelMonster.