Red Cliff

Red Cliff

148 Minutes

In 1992, John Woo, riding the wave of international attention garnered from The Killer, crafted Hard-Boiled as a calling card to Hollywood. It had more violence, mayhem, pyrotechnics and crazy action set pieces. It was, well, Die Hard in a hospital. But, damn it was kick-ass and it worked. Hollywood called, Woo answered and a slew of mediocre and just downright bad films followed over the next decade and a half. Woo never understood how to navigate Hollywood’s political waters well enough to make the films he wanted to make, the way he wanted to make them. Hollywood never understood what made Woo’s earlier films tick, reducing his work to little more than action scenes in slow-motion.

Not surprisingly, the announcement of Red Cliff was met with much anticipation. Woo was literally returning to his roots, back to Asia, back to his style of filmmaking. He had full reign of what was the most expensive production in the history of Asian cinema with a budget of $80 million. And Woo wasn’t telling just any old story, but what was perhaps the most important event in Chinese history. Megalomaniacal Chancellor Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi), with the reluctant approval of the Emperor, declares war on a pair of the country’s southern kingdoms in an attempt to rule China himself. The kingdoms join forces under the leadership of Viceroy Zhou Yu (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) in order to defend themselves. Hopelessly outnumbered – tens of thousands of soldiers compared to Cao Cao’s hundreds of thousands – Zhou Yu, aided by the scholarly advisor Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro), must outsmart Cao Cao to defeat him. It all culminates in an epic battle at Red Cliff.

Woo based the film on the Records of Three Kingdoms, the official and authoritative text on that time period. Due to the enormity of the text – 65 volumes and about 650,000 words – the story was spread out over two movies spanning a total of 280 minutes. However, the European distributors told Woo that Western audiences prefer to watch a foreign film with subtitles, but not longer than two-hours-and-fifteen-minutes. So Woo decided to make two versions, one for the Asian market and another for international, including Europe and United States. The original version was edited down to a single film of 148 minutes and obviously much was compromised. Woo explained that since Asian audiences, particularly the Chinese, are already familiar with this part of history, more time could be spent on developing the characters and the story.

Uh, shouldn’t it be the other way around? The Western release is a jarring and confusing experience precisely because of the missing character and story development. Whole storylines and motivations have been excised rendering supporting characters nothing more than extras and making it more difficult to keep track of the wide array of characters. Consequently, even though the action set-pieces remain largely intact, they lack impetus and quickly become monotonous and redundant. It’s a shame because they are inventively staged. Gone is Woo’s trademark gunplay. While there is some wire-fu, the focus is on the strategy of warfare. The characters lack the moral ambiguity and complexity of Woo’s early work. Like Lord of the Rings, this is a simple story of good versus evil. And it’s clear from the start, who’s the good guys and who’s the bad guys.

Some of the usual Woo tropes remain. His restless camera continues to glide relentlessly and there is more than a healthy dose of slow-motion, freeze frames, and dissolves. And there are pigeons, lots of pigeons. They serve a narrative purpose, but, yeah, they do get annoying. Equally grating are the cheesy transitions, obvious use of CGI, and the deep voiced narrator at the beginning of the film. They cheapen what is supposed to be a film of epic scale. But for the most part, Woo manages to get the most of the massive production values. It’s a visually stunning film with some breathtaking shots and sequences.

Chow Yun Fat, Woo’s leading man of choice, was originally chosen for the role of the film’s hero, Zhou Yu. However, he left the production a few days in under controversial circumstances. Tony Leung Chiu-Wai stepped in to save the production and doesn’t quite fill Chow’s formidable shoes. Maybe it’s because another actor dubbed his voice in Mandarin, but he looks uncomfortable and tired, too internal to command a huge army. He’s still a fine actor, but the traits that served him well in his films with Wong Kar-Wai betray him here. Takeshi Kaneshiro, on the other hand, is surprisingly good as the intellectually detached, almost delicate Zhuge Liang.

The two part version of Red Cliff is the way to see the film. There is a real scope to it, a real passion. The Western version is just another in the long line of artistic compromises Woo has made for the Western powers-that-be. Some have said that Red Cliff is a return to form for Woo. They may be right. It depends on which version of Red Cliff they are talking about.

by James Shelledy