movies: red cliff

Take a chunk of the plot from Troy, add a touch of Seven Samurai, the tiniest hint of possible magic, season liberally with director John Woo's visual trademarks and you have Red Cliff.

It's a long movie, I'm not going to lie... although from what I understand it's even longer in Asian where it's been split into two separate movies, whereas we're getting the condensed 2¾ hour version.

Actually in some ways that makes me a little sad, because even though I did get the fidgets a number of times (but that was more about my knee twitching for no good reason and the chair being slightly uncomfortable) it was a very interesting movie and I think I would have been up for the double movie treatment (just not all at once)... but then I guess that's what DVD is for and hopefully I can get my hands on the extended editions at some point.

I knew that it was a John Woo film going in, and even though I think I've only seen one or two other Woo movies, I knew there were certain things I could expect... flying doves (one of them even serves a purpose to the plot), gravity and physics defying action, intense battles and slow motion/freezeframe. Some of that is to be expected from this kind of Chinese quasi-historical drama (the middle two mostly), although unlike many of the other CQHD we've seen, this one didn't end really strangely with everybody on screen dying. So big thumbs up there! But after a quick Google for John Woo trademarks I realised just how many of them this movie gets a tick for (numbers 1, 2 but with swords, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12 and 13... just in case you're interested).

It's not as lush a movie as something like Hero or House of Flying Daggers, but it does make up for it in terms of action and these almost odd (but not unwelcome) little moments of peace within an otherwise fast paced movie. There's a little bit of everything really... action (with plenty of CGI bloodspray for the gory-minded), a romance/love story, dark humour and as I mentioned before, some mild supernatural themes. Actually that last one is very much up to the viewer... I thought there was a whiff of magic about one of the characters (as did Ma), but you could just as easily say that he was just very observant.

One of the biggest flaws with the movie though is that a number of the actors looked very similar, and when they're dressed in very similar armour it can be a little difficult to tell them apart... plus, even with the very helpful introductory names and ranks that appear on screen as we meet a number of the main characters (who are mostly generals for one side or the other), I really have only the vaguest idea of what anybody's name was by the end of the movie (and it doesn't help when one of my favourite characters had a distinctive name in the movie but it doesn't appear on the IMDB list).

But none of that stopped me from enjoying the movie.

Its big, its bold, its brash, its beautiful, it has lots of big booms... and I definitely would have gone to see it even if I hadn't won free tickets!

yani's rating: 4 bird's wing fans out of 5