Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

paulclaassen An epic masterpiece! From the acting to the music, photography and visuals. An all-round incredible production and an instant favorite! The film never ceases to amaze! The action sequences are absolutely fantastic, and the war fighting scenes were breathtakingly good!

Tweekums In the year 208 AD Prime Minister Cao Cao persuades the Han Emperor that he should be allowed to lead an army to unite all of China by invading Xu and East Wu, who are declared rebels. After his initial success these kingdom's form an alliance and prepare for battle at the strategic fortification at Red Cliff. Cao Cao's forces massively outnumber the 'rebels' but their skilled tactical leaders lead to an early victory… however Cao Cao still has a massive naval force positioned across the river from Red Cliff.This, the first half of John Woo's epic telling of the Battle of Red Cliff, is full of the sort of exciting action one would expect from Woo. There are numerous large scale battle scenes that are among the best I've seen. They capture the confusion of close quarters fighting as well as some of the brutality. The characters are interesting and the 'rebels', who are clearly the 'good guys' here are likable. This is largely because away from the fighting, politics and strategic discussions there are several lighter moments; many featuring a princess who wants to play her part in the battle and certainly doesn't intend to be married off. The cast does a fine job bringing their characters to life and keeping things interesting so I was never bored despite the fact that this film is well over two hours long but only tells the first half of the story. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to fans of historical Chinese action films even if I can't say how close it is to the known facts about what really happened… it certainly left me looking forward to Part Two.These comments are based on watching the film in Mandarin with English subtitles.

chaos-rampant This probably joins the list of great battle movies on just the scope it was conceived, though not really for what you'll see in this first movie. You actually have an option to watch a condensed version of the two movies (titled Red Cliff) or the two separate ones. If you decide on the latter, the epochal battle takes place in the second installment and here we have the setting up of lavish stage with characters walking in to assume their place in the epic.None of that even remotely interesting as storytelling. It's all filmed from the outside looking into actors on a stage, cleanly separating good from evil, every crucial point mouthed by characters and everything neatly reduced to platitude, nothing embodied or allowed to be inferred as anxious machinations of life; it's opera, something the Chinese know well from their own tradition.And nothing is allowed to breathe in a cinematic way that creates pace and rhythm, allowing each moment to have its own natural resonance dictated by itself, everything forcibly cluttered in pretty much the same way, every frame packed. It's one thing to film war this way, it seems like war would dictate that as its own rhythm, but scenes of dialogue with a cut every two-three seconds?It comes to mirror something else; so, a man of ruthless ambition mobilizing thousands on the field, moving ahead with his scheme to write epochal narrative, no one else allowed any control of their fate. And this is also the filmmaker, exercising control over the cinematic field where he orchestrates thousands to make history in such a way that nothing escapes from that control - you'll notice that almost every shot is a pan, zoom, cut, crane move to what he wants us to see. I haven't felt such overbearing control over my eyes (and put to such daft use) in a long time. People sometimes ask about badly directed movies. This is one.

le_smat_des_smat John Woo directing a movie based on true events? I first hated the idea since his 2002 movie "Windtalkers" was a piece of sh*t, but guess what? This one is great! I was very surprise with this one. John Woo is rising from the ashes of his latests American movies he made (Wintalkers and Paycheck) and give us something bigger and better.The characters where well made and they are all interesting without exception and specially Tony Leung which is one of the best actor (in my opinion) in hong kong and also worked with Woo in the intense and great Hard Boiled in 1992.The story is also well explain for those who don't know a lot about Chinese culture and historical moments and its all building up that intense battle at the end.The action scenes where epic as any John woo film but here it takes a much larger scale with the crazy slow motion that we all love and things blowing up (realisticly of course). My only complain is that here in Canada we only have a 2-3 hour movie and in china, its a 2 part movie. Overall, go see it, its a must see for Every one who loves this kind of film.