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Archive for March 28th, 2009

Movie Review: Red Cliff

March 28th, 2009 | Author: Jack

A huge, epic hit in Asia, almost unheard of in the West, Red Cliff is a pair of films, loosely based on the famous battle from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, whose amazing epicness makes it worthy to be considered as the Lord of the Rings of China. It’s a film directed by John Woo, and it comes in two parts, each part being a good-lengthed movie by itself. In total, Red Cliff delivers over four hours of epicness filled with epic-sized armies clashing, impossibly epic human feats, mesmerizingly epic scenery of Southern China, plus a pair of genius strategists dueling each other in guqin-playing skills which should be considered epic in itself.

Yes, hopefully I’ve made the point. The film is epic.

When I say that the film is only loosely based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I mean it. There are significant changes to what you might expect if you’ve read the novel and know the story. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is filled with schemes, distrust, rivalries, and political tension. Red Cliff totally abandons that aspect, and turns the moral of the story into one where two forces join together in the name of friendship in order to protect their beloved land and people from a ruthless and power hungry enemy. Despite Zhou Yu constantly trying to kill Zhuge Liang in the original novel, in the film the two constantly expresses camaraderie and constant respect towards each other, as if they’re true friends who understands and empathizes with each other’s thoughts and woes. Aside from a huge change of atmosphere, minor details were also changed. Instead of Zhang Fei scaring the opponent into retreating merely through the savageness in his voice at the Battle of Changban, this time he seems to have learned a lesson from Archimedes as he topples the entire frontal ranks of the enemy merely through a light trick. There’s a totally fictitious battle involving some unnamed Wei generals falling into Zhuge Liang’s eight-trigrams formation. Sun Shangxiang was made into a naive female warrior of sorts. Huang Gai’s self-torture ruse wasn’t approved. The ending of the battle was totally changed. And the Shu generals (Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun) seems to have a habit of fighting the opponent using the opponent’s own weapons. Guan Yu’s crescent-moon blade in the film became merely a stick that marks the destination of Guan Yu’s onslaught – that he first throws it, then he fights his way towards it killing anyone along the way using their own weapons. Zhao Yun rode into battle once without any weapons, apparently having already anticipated to capture one of the enemy’s thrown spear in mid-air. And Zhang Fei… well, let’s just say that when he fights, he is literally a demon made of iron.

So, there are so many things changed from the novel. But hey, the novel is only loosely based on history, so if the story is already inaccurate, what’s wrong with inventing a few new things? In this respect, John Woo did really well. The reinvented story is well conceived and well delivered. The pacing of the events are very natural, the ordering of the events are quite consistent, and the aftermath and ending does provide a heartful conclusion. At points, there are modern elements in this film. Sun Quan’s voice is the voice of a “cool” teenager as you’d expect from a movie like Kung Fu Dunk. Sun Shangxiang has a fanservice moment where she wears a crop top after unraveling a map of the enemy camp from her body. And there’s the repeated expression of “guo shi le” (translates into something like “no longer in style”). These modern elements weren’t a problem, however, since the film wasn’t intending to be a historical film.

The epicness of the film mostly comes from its dream-like sweeping landscape during peace scenes and the amazing use of computer-generated graphics in the battle scenes. You can clearly tell that John Woo had influence from western epics like Lord of the Rings, Kingdom of Heaven, and 300. The numerous bird’s eye views unvealing more and more of the vast Cao navy really gave justice to the mighty atmosphere of the Yangtze River and the overwhelmingness of the upcoming battle. Then we see thousands of cavalry riders, sweeping the landscape, charging towards the enemy flanks, all with thunderous noise in the background. Like Western epics, a few shots were also given specifically to the siege machines that launch flaming rocks that would cause explosive devastation upon landing. There’s the rain of arrows that would cover the sky and pierce through any small opening the defending soldiers might leave in-between their shields. There’s also all sorts of warfare techniques that were showcased regardless of whether or not they were realistic, like flashing mirrors, explosive primitive fire grenades, ropes thrown to capture opponents, mini tank-like squadrons formed by having shields on all four sides and above, etc… etc… etc…

One profound difference between Red Cliff and Lord of the Rings, however, is that in Lord of the Rings, the enemies were all gross-looking demons and monsters that no one would feel any remorse for killing. Yet in Red Cliff, the director made it clear that the armies of both sides are made up of ordinary folk who are human beings at heart, who serve only as fodder for the great generals and strategists to duel against each other. This way, even if it’s the big bad Cao Cao’s army soldiers who are getting stabbed, burned, and brutally mutilated, it still makes you feel sorry for those people. As a result, as Zhou Yu puts it in the battle’s aftermath, both sides lost, and in a war there is no real victor.

The acting was mostly quite good. Although Shidou Nakamura was in it and speaks Chinese with a heavy Japanese accent, it was still good for a degree of comical effect if you make the connection to how old-school (pre-2000) Chinese people tend to stereotype powerful Japanese men. Zhuge Liang’s voice reminds me of an arrogant kid, but in the end, the overall good effects still outweighed the bad. In terms of directing, during some of the action scenes, the multiple cuts weren’t transitioned very well, and as a result it can become confusing and choppy at times. This never happen during crucial moment-of-crowning-awesome scenes, however, so it’s excusable.

The actors and actresses talk in Chinese, and there are subtitles in both Chinese and English. If you haven’t watched the film yet, I suggest giving it a try. You’ll like it if you love epic historical films.

To truly find a Chinese equivalent to Lord of the Rings, however, you’ll also need a film that has the journey aspect of The Fellowship of the Ring. You won’t find such an aspect in Red Cliff, but if you really want to see something similar, Jackie Chan and Jet Li’s The Forbidden Kingdom fits.

The following are pictures: