The Art of War
Red Cliff has a huge cast of accomplished Asian actors including Tony Leung, Fengyi Zhang, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Wei Zhao, and Chen Chang, as well as several others. In Red Cliff, the emperor of China reluctantly grants General Cao Cao (Fengyi Zhang) permission to pronounce two Southland generals as warlords and traitors to the empire. To date, Cao Cao has crushed every warlord in his way, seeking to spread the emperor’s rule, but he’s never faced the likes of Viceroy Zhou Yu or Liu Bei. The brilliant strategist Kongming helps form the alliance between Sun Quan, Liu Bei, and Zhou Yu — but even combined, their forces are far outweighed by the incredible manpower and arsenal that Cao Cao has amassed. It will take heart, courage, intelligence, skill, and even fate to see the Southland forces through this battle.
Red Cliff includes everything you would hope for from what is obviously an epic war film. Magnificent battles, incredibly scenery, outstanding individual acting performances, drama, and even some romance. The ‘full’ version of the film — the International Edition — is nearly five hours long and took more than three years to create. John Woo mentioned in one of the extra features that he had been wanting to make this film for some twenty years, and had known the stories of 208 AD/Red Cliff since he was a child. Having now seen this Theatrical Version that runs just a bit under two and a half hours, I am eager to see the International Edition. I have to admit it was odd how quickly two and a half hours went by; watching this film was a pure treat and I was captivated from the start.
There’s a lot to like about this film. The subject material is certainly interesting as are the characters. There are several major characters here, including about a half dozen generals for the Southland alliance that are all interesting and fun to watch. I thought Woo did a great job of mixing up the battle scenes to include both massive scale scenes as well as close up action, usually featuring the martial arts of one general or another. Nothing in Red Cliff seemed over or under done, be it the action, the drama, the romance, the score — it all balances really well and makes for tremendous entertainment. Generally a film on this level, in terms of its ‘heavy’ subject material and length, would be something I wouldn’t likely want to watch very often. But Red Cliff, I have to admit, is a rare exception. It’s definitely a film I’d be happy to watch again very soon to share with friends. Red Cliff just does so much right, it’s hard to find much fault with it. Everything feels so polished and crisp, it’s just a gorgeous film in terms of technical presentation, direction, acting, story — you name it.
Red Cliff on Blu-ray
The Theatrical Edition on Blu-ray is a single disc release that has several compelling extra features. I’ll get to those in a moment, but first, how is the presentation quality? In a word, it’s stunning. It certainly helps that the locales used in China are nothing short of breath-taking, but Woo and his crew did a great job of capturing the natural elements as well as those from their sets. I never saw a hint of grain or anything technically out of place with the image quality which is a real accomplishment as far as I’m concerned for such a complex filming environment and taking into account that this is a longer than average film.
The DTS-HD 5.1 audio is superb, too. Viewers can choose between a Mandarin track or English Dub, both of which are very good. The subtitles don’t precisely match up with the English dub, but, that isn’t too uncommon in Asian cinema when it’s localized for the West. I really liked the score, and I also thought it was great that it isn’t too overbearing, or over used, which happens sometimes in this huge, epic films. The score instead is a suitable and very well performed compliment to the film.
As for extra features, there are a few, and they’re quite good. They include:
-The Making of Red Cliff: The Long Road (2h25m, SD) – A massive making of feature that includes a lot of raw behind the scenes and production footage. It’s a shame it’s in SD, but it had to be to fit on the disc. Still, the inclusion of cast and crew interviews and so much great production footage makes this a treat.
-A Conversation With John Woo: The Heroism and History of Red Cliff (27m, HD) – A one on one interview with the Director himself. A variety of questions regarding the film, the story the film is based upon, and many other topics are discussed here. Well worth a watch.
-HDNet: A Look At Red Cliff (4.5m, HD) – A nice, brief, promo type feature here.
-Storyboards – Ninety-eight drawings or storyboards from the film.
-Trailers (HD) – Several trailers from other Magnet productions like District 13 and The Warlords.
With that, let’s get to the summary…