Such a frustrating disappointment

Just perfect...

It is a performances centric movie

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It's 208 A.D. China. The ruthless Prime Minster Cao Cao has vanquished every warlord in the north. He bullies the weak Han emperor to invade the two remaining southern kingdoms led by the wise Liu Bei and the inexperienced Sun Quan. Liu Bei suffers devastating losses while protecting refugees. His strategist Kongming convinces Sun Quan to join the fight.John Woo delivers a giant CGI-filled action-packed historical epic. The action is fun. Woo brings his hyper-reality style. I would have liked more reality than hyper-reality. One can't deny the epic nature of the mass fighting scenes. The shortened American version does leave the characters stilted and lacking in depth. They are only highlight reels delivering needed expositions for the battles.

This probably joins the list of great battle movies on just the scope it was conceived, though not really for what you'll see in this first movie. You actually have an option to watch a condensed version of the two movies (titled Red Cliff) or the two separate ones. If you decide on the latter, the epochal battle takes place in the second installment and here we have the setting up of lavish stage with characters walking in to assume their place in the epic.None of that even remotely interesting as storytelling. It's all filmed from the outside looking into actors on a stage, cleanly separating good from evil, every crucial point mouthed by characters and everything neatly reduced to platitude, nothing embodied or allowed to be inferred as anxious machinations of life; it's opera, something the Chinese know well from their own tradition.And nothing is allowed to breathe in a cinematic way that creates pace and rhythm, allowing each moment to have its own natural resonance dictated by itself, everything forcibly cluttered in pretty much the same way, every frame packed. It's one thing to film war this way, it seems like war would dictate that as its own rhythm, but scenes of dialogue with a cut every two-three seconds?It comes to mirror something else; so, a man of ruthless ambition mobilizing thousands on the field, moving ahead with his scheme to write epochal narrative, no one else allowed any control of their fate. And this is also the filmmaker, exercising control over the cinematic field where he orchestrates thousands to make history in such a way that nothing escapes from that control - you'll notice that almost every shot is a pan, zoom, cut, crane move to what he wants us to see. I haven't felt such overbearing control over my eyes (and put to such daft use) in a long time. People sometimes ask about badly directed movies. This is one.

John Woo directing a movie based on true events? I first hated the idea since his 2002 movie "Windtalkers" was a piece of sh*t, but guess what? This one is great! I was very surprise with this one. John Woo is rising from the ashes of his latests American movies he made (Wintalkers and Paycheck) and give us something bigger and better.The characters where well made and they are all interesting without exception and specially Tony Leung which is one of the best actor (in my opinion) in hong kong and also worked with Woo in the intense and great Hard Boiled in 1992.The story is also well explain for those who don't know a lot about Chinese culture and historical moments and its all building up that intense battle at the end.The action scenes where epic as any John woo film but here it takes a much larger scale with the crazy slow motion that we all love and things blowing up (realisticly of course). My only complain is that here in Canada we only have a 2-3 hour movie and in china, its a 2 part movie. Overall, go see it, its a must see for Every one who loves this kind of film.

What's missing from this movie are the character development of all the villains and heroes.Red Cliff is the climax of the first half of "The Romance of Three Kingdoms", and if you read the story, there are lots of character development that went in to flesh out the personalities of each of the characters leading up to this point. Without it, the viewers will have no idea about who the characters are, because the explanations are completely missing from this movie.It's assumed that you have great familiarity with this story already going into the movie theater.For this reason, for westerners who are not familiar with this story, it will be difficult to understand what the premise of the story is, and the importance of each of the characters.So, while the movie is exciting, it might turn into just another action movie.The real story of Red Cliff is in part 2 of this movie. Part 1 is like the prequel to the war that leads up to the great battle of Red Cliff.That being said, the movie is a great masterpiece in that characters are so well presented, and formulated. People who are familiar with the story will not be disappointed, watching the movie.John Woo's did a masterful job of translating the story and bringing the characters into the big screen. If the story of Red Cliff was to be made into a movie, this is the way it should be done.