Dave's Blog

I went into this film, not knowing much about it or what to expect, but on the back of films such as Hero, House of Flying Daggers and Crouching Tiger, I was expecting amazingly artistic visuals, plenty of wire work and some brilliant fight scenes.

These elements were certainly present in the film, but John Woo was completely unable to pull it off. The CGI scenes were flawless, with seamless transitions that you knew must have happened but can’t spot. There’s one continuous shot where a dove flies from the Red Cliff fortress, through the defending armada, across the water, through the opposing armada, into the enemy camp which is a stunning example.

Sadly the rest of the film is a bit of a let down. Within 15 minutes Julia had called it, but I wanted to press on in the hope that somewhere in the next 2 hours, the film would pick up, I was mistaken.

The problem is content and pace. They introduce no less than 9 main characters in the film, the various heroes and leaders of the various armies, and it takes a while to mentally sort them all out into who is who and where they fit into the plot. This costs plenty of time and it’s easy to see why the film is two hours long as each hero gets his character developed. This all adds to the glacial pace, with long scenes where nothing really happens except for heavily veiled conversations around the plot. In some other films this would be touching and artistic, but here it seems laboured and self-indulgent. It’s almost like John Woo is an American trying to imitate a Chinese high fantasy film whilst wanting to make an action film and they really don’t mix.

By the time I got to the ‘To be continued‘, I wasn’t entirely sure if I could be bothered to sit through another two hours of boredom. Watching Red Cliff was like watching John Woo masturbate for 2 hours, like many other of his films without the exciting pace.