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I discovered Red Cliff (Chi Bi in the films’ native Mandarin) while in Japan. Part I had just been released on home video formats and Part II was hitting cinemas, so advertising was plentiful and boy, did it look good. On returning home I tried to find any information I could on a local release, but to no avail. However with my recent purchase of a Blu-Ray player, a world of region-free movies was opened up to me and when I saw that many English speakers were singing the praises of the Hong Kong releases of Red Cliff and Red Cliff II, I made the purchase pretty quickly. Having now watched all 282 minutes of John Woo’s two-part epic, I can gladly give the films the highest recommendation.

Battle scenes in Red Cliff are long, but consistently exciting.

Red Cliff is based on Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms, a record of Chinese history between 189 and 280 AD, depicting the Battle of Red Cliffs with what seems to be varying degrees of accuracy. That’s the last I’ll say of historical accuracy because, quite simply, I don’t know enough about the subject to comment. What I can say, however, is that Red Cliff is a visually stunning period piece that is epic in scope to a level that rivals even Hollywood’s biggest epics. The design is gorgeous and meticulously crafted, from the costumes to the sets, and battles mostly have a head count in the thousands and rage on for quite some time. There’s more to this movie than the visuals, but they’d certainly make it well worth watching even if there wasn’t.

The story begins with Prime Minister Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi) convincing the Chinese Emperor (the last of the Han Dynasty) to allow him to lead his armies to eliminate warlords in the south. A union forms amongst the southern kingdoms and a rebellion against Cao Cao’s bid for control over China begins. This set up is presented quite quickly, especially given the films’ total running time, but the scene is set adequately and Red Cliff gets off to a good start. Much of the first film is spent building the two armies as alliances are formed, but there’s plenty of action along the way and there is a thrilling climactic battle. War in Red Cliff is full of interesting and often unique tactics and strategies, and the mix of realism and exaggeration makes for very exciting action. Throw in John Woo’s capable direction and you’ve got an incredibly entertaining movie.

The rebels' combined strategic ability is formidable.

Red Cliff is very much a two-part movie (as opposed to two movies) by design so, while Part I has a satisfying closing act, it’s only half of the story. At almost five hours long in total it might be a stretch to watch both at once, but you probably will won’t want to leave it too long to get the full experience. Part II picks up the moment Part I leaves off, with the rebel forces outnumbered but far from finished, having  won a resounding victory against part of Cao Cao’s several-hundred-thousand-strong army in Part I. Cao Cao has numbers on his side, but he is often impatient and the combined military minds of rebels Zhou Yu (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai), Zhu-ge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro), Liu Bei (You Yong), Sun Quan (Chang Chen) and their followers may give them an edge in terms of strategy. The film rolls to a stunning finale – the battle lasts for around 40 minutes, by my count – and brings the story to a satisfying conclusion. Despite each film’s lengthy run time and the hefty combined total, Red Cliff managed to maintain my interest consistently and never outstays its welcome.

You may have noticed in that last paragraph that the cast is as big as just about everything else in Red Cliff. Thankfully, the lead ensemble is a strong assortment of Asian actors and the key roles and handled with appropriate authority. Characters are developed fairly well for the most part, and relationships – at times uncertain until secrets are revealed – help to build some additional drama. The rivalry between Zhou Yu and Zhu-ge Liang in particular provides some interesting moments. Overall there is a standard formula for characterisation in epic films at play here: some characters are given time to develop while others are essentially stock characters. This is hardly a negative however, merely a necessary byproduct of having so many characters and it works well as even the characters with less screen time are distinct and likable.

The large ensemble cast does an admirable job.

The cinematography in Red Cliff is good (largely thanks to the memorable scenery) and the editing does well to keep up with the often frenetic pace of the action. There are a few somewhat tacky uses of zoom (think old Hong Kong martial arts movies) and Part II over-uses a scene transition effect that is pretty cool the first few times, but these are nicely shot films for the most part. John Woo’s trademark doves make an appearance, but it’s integrated into the story so it doesn’t seem at all gratuitous here as it does in some of his other films. On the Hong Kong Blu-Ray releases there is a fine amount of detail, the colours are always pleasing and at times eye-popping. I’m pretty new to Blu-Ray so I can’t make broader judgements, but on its own merits Red Cliff is well worth it.

I had fairly high expectations for Red Cliff and I’m pleased to say they were met, perhaps even exceeded. This is a Chinese epic to rival Hollywood in scale with massive, exciting battle sequences and amazing visual design. If you like historical epics you’ll find a lot to like in Red Cliff provided you’re willing to accept artistic license, but isn’t that the case with almost all such films? Red Cliff has been released in a number of countries, but a wide scale Western release is due in December this year albeit in a shorter, single two-and-a-half-hour film format. If you get a chance before then to see the full two part version, as it was intended, I highly recommend you do.