Red Cliff

I think most people with Chinese cultural background should know something about this war at Red Cliff. They either read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, or play computer games, or know some of the major players in the story from TV, other movies.

Well, the movie starts with intensive war when Liu Bei retreats from Xin Ye, and although that is the beginning of marvelous things that Zhuge Liang does. Too bad, this is not a story about Zhuge Liang. The war scene is quite good, with blood flying around. I sat at the fourth row, so close that I had shut my eyes at the beginning when the spear stabs at the body. This is a bit too much for a nice person with a mild heart.

Anyway, minor complaint. We went to the matinee show at 9:30am, and only got seats at 4th row, and the room was pretty much packed. Come on, 9:30! Are these people not supposed to be in bed still?

Much anticipated Lin Chiling, a famous model, does not do very well in this movie. When she leans her head on Tony Leung's shoulder, she does not appear tiny or delicate or anything. I love her, however, she was not given a chance to perform. She was just pretty.

Some other thoughts:

* It is great to see how Cao's knights were tricked, and how the war layout was visualized, as I have read about it all the times, but can only use my imagination to picture it. The director should, however, spend more efforts to show how desperate the trapped soldiers are, and wherever they run, they see no way out. It is not as exciting to be just an onlooker, watching the whole thing from aerial view.

* I don't like the way that each major general (Zhao Yun, Zhang Fei, Guan Yu) comes out and charges the enemy. It looks like a joke, and tedious.

* Tony Leung is good. I like his performance very much.

* The dubbed pronunciation is very accurate, so the subtitle (and why do we need English subtitle in Taiwan) could be well removed. Though some of the dialog sounds like a mixture of ancient and contemporary style, but those who have read the book know should all know too well about it. The font of the subtitle is so huge that it actually distracted me.

* The major war at Red Cliff is to be continued. That is funny. The name of the movie should be something like Prologue Red Cliff.

* Generally I enjoyed the movie.