The title may simply be titled "Red Cliff", but the Battle of Red Cliff was a decisive battle in Chinese history that was fought after the Han Dynasty. And the whole 2 movies revolves around this one grand battle. I never found John Woo to be a director that makes a movie with great plots, but what he does excel at is in the action and this movie definitely delivers in the action department although not as much as I expected. The battle scenes were well choreographed, some of the flaws in this film is that it has unnecessary scenes that drag this movie when the time can be used effectively more on the actual history, other characters and more of what went down. I thought the actors did a good job, especially Takeshi Kaneshiro which was a shocker, but he played his character very charismatically. But that is also another flaw of the movie, they only delve into only a handful of characters and the rest that contributed a lot to the war just seem like cardboard. John Woo may not be a good screen writer, but besides the battle the other scenes just dragged the film and although few were very good. You will need some patience to sit through the whole movie, maybe I expected too much cause I was left disappointed. There was lack of tension and even the direction and development to be lacking. Despite the flaws the budget really showed in this film with it's sufficient battle scenes. Some that isn't really into the adaptation of popular Chinese history will find this movie sort of boring. I am going to say it, a lot of people who are fans of "Dynasty Warriors" a video game series at least found this movie to be amusing.
7.2/10
7.2/10