Red Cliff Part 1 Movie Review0

Red Cliff 1 (2008) Directed by John Woo, screen­play writ­ten by John Woo, Chen Han and Sheng Heyu based on the his­tor­i­cal records of the Three   Kingdoms era, Records of Three Kingdoms, writ­ten by the his­to­rian of Jin Dynasty, Chen Shou (A.D.233–297).

The screen­play adapts the most promi­nent bat­tle in Three Kingdoms, the Battle of Chi Bi (Red Cliff). Soon after Cao Cao self-proclaimed as the prime min­is­ter of the Han Dynasty, he began his road to the uni­fi­ca­tion of China, exter­mi­nat­ing any forces or any peo­ple who are in his way. His next tar­get is Liu Bei, an extremely dis­tant rel­a­tive of the cur­rent Han’s emperor. With the help of his strate­gist Zhuge Liang, Liu Bei’s forces form an alliance with Sun Quan. They now need to pre­pare to engage a bat­tle with Cao Cao at Red Cliff. One sel­dom seen tran­si­tion in movies nowa­days is being heav­ily used in Red Cliff – wipe. As a type of tran­si­tion that is viewed as cheesy in film the­ory, Red Cliff had suc­cess­fully show how wip­ing can be more than appro­pri­ate. As set in the olden days of China, the wipes of the movie can be related to as the scrolls being used then. And being adapted from a novel, the idea of a rolling scroll can be seen as us the audi­ence is read­ing the good old clas­sic. The humour added in this seri­ous plot helps bring out the character’s per­son­al­ity rather then non­sen­si­cal gags. Zhuge Liang’s “I know a lit­tle” of this and “I know a lit­tle” of that show­case the humourous side and hum­ble side of him. The jux­ta­po­si­tion between the Shu and Wu gen­er­als is also well shown; we see how strict the Wu gen­er­als were while the Shu gen­er­als mix and bond with their sol­diers and civil­ians. Some peo­ple, how­ever, might find one of the com­i­cal scene a lit­tle mor­bid as there is dehu­man­iza­tion occur­ring (the scene where all the Cao’s troops were cap­tured by ropes with just one last sol­dier left help­lessly before being killed). Despite the many char­ac­ters in the film, each and every one of them are clearly show­cased and intro­duced. All char­ac­ters’ first appear­ance strongly intro­duced them and cre­ates great impact. Zhuge Liang was pumped with stronger emo­tions, as com­pared to the his­tor­i­cal coun­ter­part of him, which makes him more lively and like­able. Sun Quan’s char­ac­ter became more focused on his inner strug­gles and this make him stands out. Liu Bei is also much more assertive, as com­pared to the more well known wishy-washy ver­sion of him. Cao Cao had the great­est changes; he was made totally ruth­less, unrea­son­able and invaded Eastern Wu for want­ing Xiao Qiao (Zhou Yu’s wife). Cao Cao’s rep­u­ta­tion is totally smeared for the great cause of cre­at­ing a great force of evil in the film to show a con­trast of the Shu-Wu Alliance’s right­eous­ness. This film serves as a per­fect plat­form for intro­duc­ing all the char­ac­ters and intro­duces the con­flict of the story. This sets every­one to be ready for the real Battle of Red Cliff in its sequel. As an action film that bal­ances both action and char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, Red Cliff is def­i­nitely one of the best Asian action films of all times. 4.5 out of 5 stars

- Ng Wee Kiat