Red Cliff 2008

“Action maestro John Woo returns to Chinese soil and his finest form with this historical epic (the biggest budget Chinese language movie ever made) in which heroes and villains are equally complex, battle sequences are thrillingly visceral, and the spectacle is lush and abundant. Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi), the scheming Prime Minister to the Han dynasty Emperor, leads a massive Northern army to quell the ‘rebel’ warlords of the South. He severely underestimates the wisdom of the Southern warlords and their strategists – heart-thumping performances from Tony Leung (In the Mood for Love) and Kaneshiro Takeshi (House of Flying Daggers) – and it is the friendship between allies, as much as the action, that drives Woo's extremely satisfying international version of his 5-hour, 2-part Chinese original.” — Clare Stewart, Sydney Film Festival

“The multinational production resources utilized for this cinematic recreation are unprecedented in Asia, but it is director John Woo's level-headed ordering of narrative sequence, his skill in devising kinetic live-action to off-set technical ostentation and his vision of how to turn epic into entertainment that propels Red Cliff to a thundering climax... The climactic battle lives up to popular expectations of epic filmmaking, with over 30 minutes of sophisticated military maneuvers, special effects and human drama in one continuous movement... Visceral explosions and close-ups of human carnage, combined with a few wellplaced panoramic CGI shots of the fire's domino effect on the connected fleet comes close to Titanic in achieving a sense of catastrophic grandeur.” — Maggie Lee, Hollywood Reporter