Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I'm really pleased to read this review from Cloudrider on the second part to John Woo's epic Red Cliff tale. I saw the first part and was floored by the visuals. It was a really damn good movie, but hearing that Cloudrider thinks this movie is the "Empire Strikes Back" to Red Cliff's "Star Wars" really gets me jonesing to see it! Enjoy the review!
harry, a new john woo movie is out all over asia. reviews have been posted on the net, but where’s the news here? i clicked AICN to see if there’s any review posted yet, and still, there’s nothing. i’m not one who likes to write reviews, i rather read them, but when a new john woo movie is out, and it’s a masterpiece, and no one is talking about it here, even i have to stop and do something. yes, the new movie i just watched yesterday can actually make you forgive and forget the utter travesty that was john woo’s paycheck, and make you believe that the man who made the best actioner of all time has indeed returned to his throne. john woo is a personal favorite director of mine. everyone in film school wants to be like spielberg and scorsese. me? i want to be john woo. not that it was always love at first sight. the first time i watched hardboiled in a college screening, i remembered thinking… ‘too much bloody shooutouts! do they need that many bullets just to kill one guy?’ but as my appreciation of cinema grew, i have come to understand why the man was adored by many hollywood insiders, with scorsese and tarantino professing to be huge fans. now i am a fullblown john woo buff. i think face/off is one of the best hollywood actioner of all time, right up there with the best of them by cameron and spielberg. and i can say without the slightest pretention that i think hardboiled is the single BEST action movie of all time. it’s elegant, it’s wild, it’s everything a movie with ten thousands bullets can approach to being an art. so imagine my coming out of M:I 2’s screening. he followed up face/off with this forgettable shampoo commercial? two more duds followed and i thought, okay… maybe it’s time for me to move on. the guy has reached his peak. end of the line here. it’s just embarrassing to see from now on. and then he pulled this shit on me. forget red cliff 1. it was good, yes. but if you think part 2 is more of the same, you are sadly sadly mistaken. this is the empire strikes back to star wars, the godfather 2 to godfather 1. and i have to tell, it’s so fucking great to be in love with a john woo movie again! this time he does it without a single gun in sight, and trust me, you wont even miss it. the naval battle promised in the cliffhanger in part 1 is there, but unlike you might think, it happens at the very end of the movie. the whole movie leading up to that plays like a game of chest with each players trying to outwit the opponent. each side tries to trick the other side and diminishes the enemy’s numbers. the fun is in how they come up with ingenious plans to achieve this without firing a single shot. i won’t spoil it for you, but let’s just say a scrap of paper, a dove(yeah, the dove is actually more than just window dressing this time around), and the fog can do the work of swords and arrows. and that’s one element that i like about the war strategies employed here. the good guys utilize everything available in nature to aid their cause. in the first movie, we saw them use the sun and the sands to blind the charging army. now here, the wind and the mist are their allies – when the good guys are short on arrows for the upcoming battle, zhuge liang promised zhou yu he would bring back 100,000 arrows in 3 days, and watch how he accomplished that feat with nothing but the help of the fog. there’s also more humor this second time around, mostly courtesy of vicky zhao. and if there’s one subplot i could do without, it’s her subplot. it adds a more playful element to the epic that i don’t feel it needs. i always find vicky zhao to be more like an anime character than a real actress in all the films she’s in, so maybe i’m a bit biased. but the good news is, here i don’t find her annoying or distracting, just that her part unnecessary. i heard that the upcoming american cut will be only 2 ½ hours long out of the 4 hours combined over 2 movies. no doubt the vicky zhao scenes will be excised. the other actors are all given their own moments in the spotlights, with tony leung leading the charge. and while you won’t see liu bei’s badass generals dispatching minions for a great length of time like in part 1, we see another player shortchanged in part 1 brought forth for more screen time here in part 2. it’s xiao qiao, played by lin chi-ling. unlike her counterpart in peterson’s troy, this face that launch a thousand ships actually do more than look pretty and helpless. when time is of the essence, she’s willing to make a sacrifice and go into the lion’s den alone, knowing that cao cao, the lead bad dude, is desiring her. and that lead to one of most emotional scene (there are several in this movie, and you’d be pleased to know that, unlike in windtalkers, none are cringe-inducing) with the army showing solidarity to tony leung’s character because his wife is now in the bad guy’s bedroom. yeah, i know woo did this too in M:I 2 with tom cruise when his girlfriend has to play lover to the bad guy(which is in itself a rip off of hitchcock’s notorious). the difference is, here the emotion is earned and as the result you do have genuine sympathy for the character. and while her motto is make tea, not war, she’s willing to end the war using… tea, if necessary. but i have to say, the best actor in the whole movie is zhang fengyi as the main bad guy. here’s a ruthless tyrant potrayed in countless other movies. all kind of actors from all kind of backgrounds have played this role. ambitious megalomaniac who crave power and women. and yet, i have never seen it played like zhang played it here. he’s ruthless and arrogant yes, but the air that surrounds him is not of malice like in so many hollywood bad guys. he has a presence of a stately ruler, and while it’s mentioned he’s charging into red cliff simply for a woman, you also believed him when he said he’s doing it for the greater good of a unified china. and the script always resist to reduce him to a one dimensional villain. when he asked one soldier suffering of typhoid what he wants, and the soldier replied he just want to go home, you half expect cao cao to dispatch the soldier the way bad guys in hollywood movies always do. but woo is not after your hate here. he doesn’t want it. cao cao went on to reminisce about his son and made a speech that boost the morale of his entire disease ridden army. but let’s talk about fiery climax. what about it? ten thousands ships goes up in flame. if that is not a sight to behold in a dark windy night at sea, nothing is. the final battle scene is massive and well choreographed, and more importantly, it doesn’t feel like it’s being directed by a video game designer. you see in the good guys’ eyes they even feel for the enemy soldiers burnt at the sea. there’s nothing glorious or gung-ho about it. and when they’re victorious and someone said the bad guys have lost, tony leung’s character commented that everybody lost. one thing in the climax i’m dissapointed with though, is the mexican standoff. john woo has crafted some of the coolest standoff ever. but here, with the swords and the way it’s played out is just not that good enough.maybe because it’s been done many times over and done better by the man. all my quibbles aside, this is a really superbly crafted movie. i watched the first part at home in dvd, but seeing part 2 in the big screen is just a totally different experience. don’t deny yourself the same experience. this is not the work of the same man who did his last 3 hollywood movies. this is the man you loved, returning to what he does best. hardboiled. the killer. a better tomorrow. face/off. now red cliff can join that rank. and i have to repeat, it just feel so fucking great to be in love with a john woo movie again! cloudrider`
