Red Cliff (2008, China)
What an overblown mess! If there ever was a movie that needed a libretto, it's probably this. The first 45 minutes or so there was a big question mark floating over my head wondering who was who, and why were they doing what they were doing. A lot of people, a lot of fighting, a lot of killing, but who the hell are these people?

There is some text in the beginning that whizzes by too fast to read, and even more curious is that for every paragraph of Chinese text on screen, there is only one sentence of English subtitle. Could this be the source of the confusion?

I finally stopped the DVD in the middle to look up on Wikipedia what was going on and who was who in the historical battle of Red Cliff. That helped for the second viewing, but that wasn't the only problem during the first viewing.

It's a John Woo film, so one should expect great action, horrible dialogue, hard-boiled characters (just in ancient Chinese style), and a fair share of hard-boiled scenes that I suppose are there to delve deeper into the characters. The characters? This is a John Woo film! Who gives a frack about the characters?! The action is the characters. John Woo doesn't know how to do "character". God, I hope all those scenes get cut.

Not that it's terrible, but I can't recommend this film.

The film I'm talking about is, by the way, the Asian release of "Red Cliff", which is, at 2 and a half hours long, only part one of the film. The second part opens in theaters in January 2009, and by coincidence, I saw a poster for part two for the first time today. Good timing on my part. That is, if I plan to see the second part in the theaters. I have a month to decide.

The total film will be over 4 hours long. For outside of Asia, a shorter single two hour plus film will be released. Part one has so much fat, so many superficial scenes that I can guess (and hope) which ones will be cut. I have a feeling the outside-Asia release is going to kick ass. A real John Woo classic. But this, part one, had too many god-awful "character development" scenes that I don't recommend it, wait for the abridged version. 5 out of 10 tomatoes, anticipating a much higher rating, 8 or 9, for the international release. Please don't let me down, John Woo.