SYNOPSIS:
In 208 A.D., the final days of the Han Dynasty, shrewd Prime Minster Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi) convinced the fickle Emperor Han the only way to unite China was to declare war on the kingdoms of Xu (You Yong) in the west, and East Wu (Chang Chen) in the south. Thus began a military campaign of unprecedented scale, led by the Prime Minister, causing the two kingdoms to form an alliance. Numerous battles ensued on land and water, eventually culminating in the battle of Red Cliff...
MOVIE REVIEW:
Although this is supposedly be a DVD review for the Red Cliff Complete Collector’s Edition (consisting of the first and second movie), this review will focus more on the second part of John Woo’s historical epic. For reviews that focus on the first part of Red Cliff, please refer to the First Movie Review and the First DVD Review. For a more positive review of Red Cliff 2, please refer to the Second Movie Review
Personally, I don’t understand why my fellow reviewers are holding the Red Cliff two parts epic from John Woo in such high regards. There are fine moments in this movie but the movie was also constantly being marred by some rather ludicrous film making decisions.
Let’s start with the good moments in Red Cliff 2. Those moments occurs when the various "Art of War" strategies that made the Battle for Red Cliff famous were being portrayal. It touches on how schemes and polices are used in a largely psychological warfare and they were a delight to watch.
The scenes in which Zhuge Liang schemes to raise one hundred arrows within 3 days and Zhou Yu schemes to kill Cao Cao’s admirals were a testament to why the Battle for Red Cliff is such a classic segment in Romance of the Three Kingdom. It also exemplifies top notch psychological warfare by showing how Cao Cao dealt with his diseased dead soldiers and Lui Bei’s unexpected retreat. It even went on to showcase how one with the knowledge of the weather and geographic would have an upper hand in warfare.
Beside those strategies, some of the war scenes were quite impressive too. Particularly those that involved usage of fire during battle and some of those that involved naval battles. Some of John Woo’s slow mo trademark were put into good use in the battle scenes too.
Those points mention above were the highlights of Red Cliff 2 but sadly and ironically, Red Cliff 2 was bogged down by other unnecessary extra elements added by the film makers. Ironically, Director John Woo claimed that he had chosen to use the more historically accurate version of the Battle of Red Cliff instead of the romanticized version that depicted in the Romance of the Three Kingdom and yet ended up featuring certain events that felt rather improbable.
The problem mainly arises when John Woo decided to feature the women (Sun Shangxiang played by Zhao Wei and Zhou Yu’s wife Xiao Qiao played by Lin Chiling) more prominently. Even though it might be true that Princess Sun Shangxiang was a tomboy, it’s really hard to fathom that she would have been given so much liberties to do what she did in this movie. To make her a spy in the enemy’s camp was rather silly. What if she was captured? Wouldn’t that be more problematic for her brother Sun Quan?
It’s already a tall ordeal to compact the original source material into two movies and Red Cliff 2 chose to waste precious screen time in playing up a love affair between Sun Shangxiang and another solider from the enemy camp. Not to mention how Cao Cao promoted that same dumbass solider to a battalion commander purely for his soccer skills? It just points out that the Cao Cao in this movie is pretty stupid to do such a thing. Needless to say that the soccer (or Cuju as they called it) matches are equally pointless as the love affair between Sun Shangxiang and Dumbo (though John Woo used the lame excuse that said supposedly promotes the soldier’s morale. It made one wonder if it was done purely to showcase his love for soccer. I also wonder if anyone remember that Nike futebol Airport and Good Vs Evil soccer ads that was done by him?).
It was said that the director might had wanted to use this subplot to bring up the issue of the absurdities of war but it’s not only missing the right notes and it’s distracting viewers from the main points of the Battle of Red Cliff. Other films had done it better and since it’s the adaption of the Battle of Red Cliff, wouldn’t it be wiser to focus on the tactics instead?
Likewise, the filmmaker usage of Xiao Qiao during the war was a moot point. It makes one wonder how did a lady like her would get to row a boat across 'No man land' without any detection from Zhou Yu camp? Were the sentry guards asleep or was their defense that weak? Just as the webmaster had pointed out in his review for the first part of the Red Cliff epic, it just seems so impossible for someone like Cao Cao to be so lovelorn over someone, even she is a beautiful as Lin Chiling. It also makes one wonder near the predictable finale, why Cao Cao or his men didn’t use her as a pawn to deter Zhou Yu’s invading forces before it’s too late.
Speaking of Zhou Yu’s invading forces; it was also difficult to swallow Sun Quan’s presence in Zhou Yu’s army. It’s understood that John Woo wants to drum up the male bonding and camaraderie but it made no sense that a ruler would be involved in a thick of battle. Wouldn’t all the enemy solders be targeting their arrows and swords at him or even at Zhou Yu for all that matters?
Lastly, at the finale in which all the characters conveniently converge for a standoff just felt ridiculous to Cao Cao’s eventual fate in this movie. It’s all hallmarks of John Woo’s work for such confrontation but it just contradicts with various conflicts that Cao Cao had with the characters that happened to be around. The resolution would mean more trouble for Zhou Yu’s country men in the future. I understand that he is trying to portray the gentlemen code here but if the story would to be played out in this manner, it would make sense to use this opportunity to their empire’s advantage. It just sounds awfully illogical even for one who has very little knowledge of the actual history.
In closing, it felt that John Woo had needlessly prolonged this movie into two parts. A tighter and more focus film on the Battle of Red Cliff would have been more effective and I am suspecting that’s what the Non Asian viewers are getting. It just seems awfully strange that on one hand, he would claim to use materials from accurate historical materials and on other hand, meander it with unnecessary and improbable elements. Collectively, It’s a better than your average movie project but definitely not a 4 stars material that my fellow viewers are giving.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
Making off
This is one of the worst Making off segments that I have ever seen. Slightly better than the B Rolls as this 'edited' Making off segment features voice over narration to give viewers an rough idea what’s going on. But the rest of this segment was so badly done that someone with very little video editing skills would have done a better job in putting this together.
How bad was this segment? First and most obvious problem with this Making Off segment would be the choppy cutting and linking of clips. There are frequent black out moments in between clips that disrupt the flow of a video for the Making off segment. There is also no clear flow to this Making of segment. It basically jumps from one clip to another. It made it so hard to decide if this should be a B Rolls or a making off Segment.
The next distracting bit would be the Audio editing aspect of this Making off segment. The editor neglect to remove background audio and the results were that you are able to hear the background noise and even music coming from staffs’ computer when they were doing their stuff on their computer. If you like to know what they were listening to, it was one of Akon’s song.
Besides leaving the background noise on, this segment also weirdly features some voice over narrations that got cut off in the midst of it’s narration delivery. They don’t even get to finish what was printed on the Chinese subtitles that appeared on the screen. One notable bit was during John Woo speech about Zhou Yu’s character and it was abruptly cut off. It just felt rather unprofessional and jarring to listen to these halfway narrations.
Overall, the China film crew who made this making off segment should pick up a few of the original Dvds from Hollywood to study the art of making a making off segment. Otherwise, this segment is only good for watching what happened during the making of Red Cliff when the camera is not rolling or from a different viewpoint.
Strictly for Fans who can’t get enough of this movie.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
All the war scenes and dialogues between the warmongers are presented in fine definition that should be expected from a recent movie. It does well conveying the message of this film when it’s being shown on a TV format.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Richard Li Jr
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