"Red Cliff" aka "Dynasty Warriros: The Movie"

Being the Three Kingdoms enthusiast that I am, I'm glad to report that I finally watched the new Red Cliff movie, "directed by John Woo and stars Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Zhang Fengyi, Chang Chen, Hu Jun, Lin Chi-ling and Zhao Wei," three of whom I actually knew about prior to watching the film. This movie review is going to be from the perspective of someone who's a big fan of the history behind Three Kingdoms era, and have read and studied it during my own free time, as well as played the Koei Dynasty Warriors and Romance of the Three Kingdom series.

For starters, I agree with the review summary of LoveHKFilm.com, saying that movie is "a notch less than the stunning masterpiece everyone hoped for." The movie had quite a bit of hype during its production and there's a slight feeling of disappointment that lingers in the back of your mind. Movies based on the Three Kingdoms, or historical pictures in general, tend to be grandiose and epic in scale. RC is no different, but there is more focus on the "individual," especially Tony Leung's Zhou Yu and Takeshi Kaneshiro's Zhuge Liang.

The individuals also play a very large role during the battle scenes, where it's really all about 1 general at a time. If you had 10 Jet Lis, how do you give all of them enough camera time? The obvious answer is to give each of them 1/10 of the time you'd give 1 Jet Li. *shrug* In that sense, there are whole stretches of just Dynasty Warriors-style combat. One man vs One army.

The special effects and battle scenes are done pretty well, even if it is over-the-top. The Eight-Array Maze devised by Zhuge Liang is one of the his greatest early military accomplishments, and John Woo does a good job translating it on-screen. It's a difficult thing to do, considering that I don't think anyone, to this day, knows what the Eight-Array Maze is exactly...Haha.


I do have a handful of dissatisfactions with the movie, however. For one, I felt there were some unnecessary scenes as well as a few scenes that dragged longer than it should have. They provided no importance in "the grand scheme of things" and existed only to remind tell a more long-winded version of the story.

Also, coming from someone who knows the actual story better than most others, I am slightly irritated by some of the things that were neglected in the movie. I say 'slightly' because I also know that given the direction, there would be no real good way to integrate it.

Overall, the movie was solid and well-done, with some good performances from the leads. The things that take away from the experience are the extra scenes that do little to move the story and only slightly develop the [unimportant?] characters.