Movie Review : Red Cliff
When I was in London last month I managed to catch a movie in the cinema which I have heard a lot about. Red Cliff is a Chinese movie which has broken all box office records when it was released in China last year. Now I had no idea what to expect, I didn’t see the trailer and I was just hoping this wasn’t going to be another Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with people flying around in mid air. The movie was actually split in two parts when shown in Asia running a total for both of over 4 hours! The 2 parts were combined into one movie lasting about 2 1/2 hours for European release which is the version I saw. Here’s the quick run down :
Plot
The movie is a true story set 1800 years ago when the Prime Minister of Northern China decides to unite China by starting a war to conquer the kingdoms in the West and the South of the country. Naturally those kingdoms are not keen on the idea of being conquered and have to try to defend themselves against a massive and fully trained army.
Verdict
There are no flying people in this movie! It is a wonderful, epic movie with incredible battle scenes, excellent acting, breathtaking photography and unexpected twists. The director John Woo is known in the West for his action movies like Face Off, but this movie is not modern Hollywood exaggerated action. This is how movies used to be and how they should still be. If you had to compare it to something I guess Troy would give you a very rough idea. I say very rough idea because Red Cliff is 100 times better than Troy.
The longer the movie goes on the better it gets as both sides try to outsmart each other by using tactics so original you almost want to applaud them. After one partcicular scene, I was saying to myself ”Wow this movie is just amazing”.
Red Cliff is the best movie experience I have had since Lord of The Rings. So I have no doubt in calling this my Movie of the Year !
Warning : Do NOT watch the trailer if you can avoid it. It does give away some really key scenes and doesn’t do the movie justice (which is why I didn’t post it !!)
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But seriously did you like it!!! loool, man I wanna see it now, how do I do that?
Yeah the movie was Ok :) Seriously though, awesome and not just because of all the battle scenes (as good as they are). I doubt they will be bringing it to the cinema in kuwait which is a shame. Not sure how you would get to watch it.Wait a minute, did someone mention Hawalli….?