Red Cliff (2008)

An epic masterpiece! From the acting to the music, photography and visuals. An all-round incredible production and an instant favorite! The film never ceases to amaze! The action sequences are absolutely fantastic, and the war fighting scenes were breathtakingly good!

Red Cliff is a superficial entertaining martial arts movie that had the potential to be much better but failed to come close to Kurosawa's Ran or Kagemusha in storyline or depth of character. Even the Korean Film - The Admiral - Roaring Currents (2014) was much superior in storyline - acting and special effects. If you enjoy watching folks doing unbelievable aerobatics and slicing and dicing twenty armed opponents this film is for you. If not - watch this once and then donate to your local library.

The first word that comes to mind is epic. There is simply no other way to describe the massive scale sweeping narrative of this production. Battle scenes contain hundreds, sometimes even thousands of extras. When the camera tracked over Cao Cao's fleet, I couldn't help but feel impressed. It's one thing to be told that someone has two thousand ships; it's another thing entirely to see every one of them, stretching for miles along a swollen river. Whether it's the number of extras, the exquisitely detailed set pieces, or the lavish costume design, you can tell that no expense was spared at any point.Of course there's more to a film than just production values, there's also the matter of plot and characterization. Fortunately, Red Cliffs delivers here as well. The plot, which follows warlord Cao Cao's invasion of southern China in ancient times, is easy to follow but not at all threadbare. The characters are also fairly well developed, considering the size of the cast.I admit that at first I wasn't sure what to think of the combat sequences. They were certainly quite impressive, but seeing a warrior dodge spear thrusts from half a dozen enemies and then dispatch all of them with a single attack made it hard for me to suspend my disbelief. Then I realized that this is a martial arts film as much as a war movie. When viewed on these terms, the fight scenes were highly enjoyable. I rarely got the feeling that any of the actors' moves owed more to special effects than to their physical abilities, and it was quite refreshing to see them dispense with the One at a Time Attack Rule. The larger battle sequences between armies are also well staged, with the Tortoise Shell Formation sequence being one of most impressive displays of strategy and precision choreography that I've seen in quite a while.This film is hardly perfect. Some parts of the movie, such as the birth of the foal, or the scene in which one of the generals tends to his pigeons didn't seem entirely necessary. I suppose that perhaps these scenes had some greater meaning that Chinese audiences would have grasped, but I can certainly understand how the distributors were able to cut the running time by half for the film's western release.Overall, however, it does a good job of holding the viewer's attention and telling a compelling story. It is a successful blend of historical epic and martial arts film, and should satisfy fans of both.

A great mass-scale warfare movie. This movie pits a smaller force against a vastly larger force, and of course tactical genius and gorilla warfare is the cement that builds this story. The battle-tactics used in this movie are really impressive and I've never before seen anything like it (and I've watched many warfare movies). The instructions that the commanders yell out really see the direction of the story change. I also like that they used a few female warriors in the movie, because it's too often that you see 'all male casts' and women only running for the hills. You do however see the traditional "godlike protagonists" where a single hero kills 50+ warriors, but that is understandable. In the non-dubbed version of the movie, the actors were very passionate and you could see truly heartfelt acting. This is a really good warfare movie, full of action, 7/10.