Red Cliff Part 1 Part 2 (Blu-ray) (2010)

"The immensity encompasses such variety, subtlety and intimacy that you may find yourself yearning for more  Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal
"This is magnificent filmmaking, and a magnificent film.  Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer

San Francisco Chronicle 10 of 10
Time was, impalement was a shocking development in movies. Now, skewered midriffs are the norm for period war epics. They're a common sight in John Woo's captivating spectacle Red Cliff, a huge, bloody slab of orgiastic battle sequences and crafty military gamesmanship...The movie doesn't handle nuance too well, and the dialogue spins pretty frequently into unmitigated corniness. But anyone who enjoys stylized hyper-violence should be enthralled by this long, sweeping, murderously vivid dramatization of ancient Chinese warfare, circa A.D. 208...On one side: The 800,000 amassed troops of Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi), a prime minister busy manipulating the weak Han emperor (Wang Ning). On the other side: the combined armies of Liu Bei (You Yong) and Sun Quan (Chang Chen), two emergent leaders to the south. With Cao Cao preparing to invade, Liu Bei's canny young strategist, Kong Ming (Takeshi Kaneshiro), persuades him to ally with Sun Quan and Quan's stouthearted viceroy, Zhou Yu (Tony Leung)...Together, Sun Quan and Liu Bei lead a fraction of the men at Cao Cao's command. They don't have nearly as many weapons. When the prime minister's forces encamp across from Sun Quan and Liu Bei's on the Yangtze River, the sheer mass is chilling. This setup has us rooting for the underdogs: The good guys may be outgunned (or out-catapulted), but they're far from outwitted. For all its thundering armies, fleets of ships and eye-popping digitized glitz, the strong suit of Red Cliff is the way it puzzles out the tactics behind the Battle of Red Cliffs: weather and wind, arrows and fire, spying behind enemy lines...Virtuosic gore is standard operating procedure for John Woo, back in form after losing his way with irrelevancies like Paycheck. Originally released for Asian theaters in two parts (with a 280-minute running time), this condensed version opens with a stentorian English voiceover and adds a few on-screen titles identifying various generals. The titles fade after a while, along with the need for them. The film is plenty vivid on its own. - Amy Biancolli