The Battle of Red Cliff
"Battle of Red Cliff" is the epic retelling of the famous battle scenes at Red Cliff, and is adapted from China's beloved historical classic, Three Kingdoms. It hails John Woo back to Asian cinema and brings together a star studded cast that includes Tony Leung, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Chang Chen, and Zhao Wei. The film also boasts one of the biggest budgets for a Chinese movie. It is an action packed film with many war scenes and beautiful scenery set in Southern China. So what went wrong?
In short, the storytelling and the characterizations. Though John Woo decided to cut the story into two movies - the second movie to be released some time in January 2009 - it felt as if the story, and the background itself were missing from it. If one were not already familiar with all the characters and the original story, the movie would be confusing for a newcomer. The film begins with the powerless young emperor ceding to Prime Minister Cao Cao to raise arms against Liu Bei. Liu Bei is the acknowledged royal uncle who hopes of overthrowing Cao Cao's tyrannical rule. Liu Bei commands three of the most famous generals in history, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and Zhao Yun and the movie showcases them fully at the beginning as they are chased by Cao Cao's massive forces. Liu's army is dragged down by civilians and refugees but the kind-hearted Liu refuses to leave them behind. His chief adviser, Zhuge Liang, crosses over to the Eastern Wu state, to persuade its ruler, Sun Quan, to ally against Cao Cao. An indecisive Sun Quan finally decides to fight after he is persuaded by Zhou Yu, his trusted adviser in external affairs. Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu team up to strategize against the advancing foot and naval army of Cao Cao. They succeed in an ambush but only make a small dent in Cao's army. They know that the next battle will be held at the crucial Red Cliffs. The film closes fittingly with a John Woo motif - a white dove flies over to Cao Cao's camp across from Red Cliffs.
Most characters in Red Cliffs don't get an introduction. This is where character dialogue might come in handy for creating the relationships between characters in the viewer's mind but that is used sparingly. Either the writer decided that these characters are already well-known enough or wanted to emphasize mainly on the Eastern Wu state players. We immediately follow Liu Bei's flailing army after Cao Cao's declaration of war on them and are supposed to care about and know already that this is Liu Bei's army, this is Guan Yu, this is Zhang Fei, Zhao Yun, Zhuge Liang, and so on. The brotherhood of Liu, Guan, and Zhang was non-existent here, along with why these great generals willingly follow Liu Bei. Liu Bei is probably the most overlooked and under-emphasized character in the whole movie. The film depended a lot on showing the physical prowess of the generals, and in part it worked - especially reenacting Zhao Yun's rescue of Liu Bei's son single-handedly. I suspect that John Woo's favorite character must be Zhao Yun because I am not sure if some of Zhao Zilong's long battle scenes are necessary to tell Red Cliff's core story.
The most disappointing character is Zhuge Liang in the film. Takeshi Kaneshiro looked great as Zhuge Liang but he lacked the cunning touch in this character. Takeshi's Zhuge was more muted, humble, and it felt as if he didn't really display his supreme knowledge in war strategy. This is the famous "Sleeping Dragon" whose wit and knowledge are supposed to rival the founding Han adviser, Zhang Liang, but in the movie, he seemed on par with, or even second best to Zhou Yu. For instance, when he lands at Wu to persuade Sun Quan to go to war, he doesn't display his debating skills to silence and befuddle all the voices of dissent from Wu's scholars. This is such an awesome scene in the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" novel that I thought it was a bad decision not to include it. Nor does Zhuge Liang goad Sun Quan or Zhou Yu into declaring war. Instead, both Sun and Zhou both crave this war already - Zhuge didn't even have to say anything to Zhou Yu.
Zhuge Liang comments on the outdatedness of the Goose Formation training of Wu's General Gan Xing but doesn't have anything to back up on why it's ineffective. Instead, he later suggests an even more outdated Eight-Diagram Formation and uses Gan Xing's rebuttal jokingly - that as long as it's effective, it doesn't matter that it's outdated. There is a scene where he plays the zither with Zhou Yu while Xiao Qiao, Zhou's wife, listens and comments afterwards that Zhuge's music tells her that "he needs friends". Was it to say he needs Wu as an ally or that Zhuge is a lonely person who needed a true friend?
Tony Leung stole the show as Zhou Yu, though to his benefit too, a great amount of characterization was given to his role. The best scene is when he is overseeing training for his army and suddenly hears flute music. He halts everything and walks up to the boy playing by his grandfather and takes his flute with a knife in hand. The boy and his grandfather watches in apprehension but Zhou only uses the knife to adjust the flute holes for a better sound quality. The worst scene is the sex scene with Xiao Qiao - this was pretty useless and didn't serve the plot. The next worst scene is when they are coaxing a horse to give birth - this was overly long to show that Zhou Yu craved a peaceful life. He contradicts this completely when he says he wants to go to war and doesn't give the viewers a reason for it. "Must fight".. but why? Is it war for the sake of honor? Does he have some vendetta against Cao Cao or was it to glorify the Sun House or just ridding a villain for the sake of the empire?
Cao Cao going to war because of his lust for Xiao Qiao seemed silly. This was supposed to be a verbal ruse by Zhuge Liang to incite Zhou Yu into war. Cao Cao is a ruthless and ambitious character who craved power above all. He has a great many talented generals and advisers but is overly confident and suspicious too. So to reduce this character's motivation to be over a woman was undermining him.
The females are just adequate in the film. Model-turned-actor Lin Chi Ling was adequate as Zhou Yu's wife, Xiao Qiao. She has a quiet elegance that fitted the role and was definitely the prettiest female character in the movie as she's supposed to be a great beauty in the novel. Zhao Wei's role as Sun Quan's spunky sister, Sun Shangxiang, was really custom made for her since she wasn't supposed to appear until later in the story. Zhao Wei has no problems playing the rebellious princess character.
I also never thought I'd say this, but the battle scenes are too long in this movie. It was like watching myself play PlayStation 2's Dynasty Warriors at some point, except the killings were boring since I couldn't control the characters. The last battle of the movie with the Eight-Diagram Formation was interesting for about one minute and tedious after that. By that time, we've already seen Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and Zhao Yun in action already so just watching them plow through soldiers began to lose appeal.
Overall, this version of Red Cliff is heavy on the players of Eastern Wu, which is an interesting perspective but disappointing since it's not the mainstream telling of the Three Kingdoms story that we are familiar with. Supposedly this version follows the original text closer than the dramatized Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel but because of this, the tension and anticipation are gone from its characters and situations. Let's just hope the sequel will redeem this movie, because so far it's not impressive.
