Reviews: Red Cliff (8 Days Magazine, Singapore, July 10) (文章 Article)
by qinyi(R) (新加坡), Wednesday, July 09, 2008, 17:50:20
By Whang Yee-Ling
Budget overruns. Torrential rains. Chow Yun Fat is replaced by Tony Leung. Tony is out, Takeshi Kaneshiro is in. Tony is in again.
It was worth the notoriously troubled production. Director-writer-producer John Woo‘s first Chinese feature in nearly 15 years and, at US$80 million (S$104 mil), Asian cinema‘s biggest undertaking, the historical war epic Red Cliff proves a grand achievement.
The 13th century literary classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms has inspired mangas, videogames, television serials, and another recent movie adaptation, Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon starring Andy Lau.
It is an account of Prime Minister Cao Cao‘s ruthless military campaign to unify China during the final days of the Han Dynasty, 208 AD.
As Cao readies an army of 800,000 soldiers and 2,000 ships, the Kingdom of Xu in the west persuades East Wu Kingdom in the south into combining their outnumbered troops against the invasion.
Takeshi is the Xu envoy Zhu-Ge Liang, the Taiwanese pretty boy bringing the requisite grace and guile to Zhu-Ge‘s silver-tongued negotiations.
Tony is Viceroy Zhou Yu of Wu. Yes, the Hongkong actor stayed on in the cast after all for a re-teaming with his Bullet in the Head and Hard Boiled filmmaker and he is a magnetic presence as befits Zhou the musician-general romantic hero.
There is an electrifying scene, a qin instrument playoff between Zhu-Ge and Zhou, wary strangers, entering into an alliance, that serves as a harmonisation of their intent.
Cao himself is not without charisma. The Chinese thespian Zhang Fengyi makes this formidable adversary a hungry, handsome despot envious of Wu‘s brave warriors, the likes of Hu Jun‘s Zhao Zhilong, and desirous of Zhou‘s beautiful wife played by model Lin Chiling in her acting debut.
Zhu-Ge and Zhou must defeat his men for a better tomorrow. Thus Woo takes his signature themes of brotherhood and chivalry across the vast canvas of history that encompasses also Chang Chen as the self-doubting 26-year-old leader of Wu and Zhao Wei, full of spunky humour, as his tomboy sister.
It is the latter and her archers who will lay the trap for Cao at the battlefield at San Jiang Kou.
This is a movie about battles of forces and wits. Woo ties together with singular cohesive vision a story of riveting detailed cunning as Zhu-Ge and Zhou scheme to out-fox Cao, all three brilliant military strategists, and thunderous action spectacle, Tim Yip‘s sweeping production design as magnificent as Cory Yuen‘s martial choreography is pulse-gripping.
Woo fleshes out character, builds excitement, sustains momentum.
These two-and-a-quarter hours are just the first, enthralling half of a diptych. It leaves the enemy armies setting up camp on opposite banks of Yangtze River in preparation for the Battle of Red Cliff, the most famous battle in China, the culmination of the saga, which will conclude end of the year, and a promise that the best is still to come.
4.5/5 stars
