Red Cliff (Extended Version) | DVD Review

A twenty-year dream; five years of pre-production; a full year of principal photography; a cast of thousands. With Red Cliff, director John Woo (Hard Boiled, The Killer) returns to his roots in delivering his masterwork, an astonishing historical drama based on the legendary tale of the Three Kingdoms and a crucial battle in a war that took place over 1800 years ago.

In 208 A.D., Prime Minister Cao Cao (Fengyi Zhang, The Emperor and the Assassin) convinces the young and naive emperor of the Han Dynasty to grant him ultimate military power so that he can head south and launch an all-out offensive against two warlords, Liu Bei (Yong You, Underdog Knight) and Sun Quan (Chen Chang, Kim Ki-Duk’s Breath), who stand in the way of his bid for ultimate power. The two pool their forces in what amounts to a David vs. Goliath scenario – their armies are outnumbered by over 700,000 soldiers – combining the combat stylings of Zhou Yu (Tony Leung, Infernal Affairs, Hero) and the intelligence and cunning of Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro, House of Flying Daggers) against the sheer force of numbers of Cao Cao’s army. Scads of hard-fought and bloody battles ensue, and they are a true wonder to behold on the screen, with John Woo’s usual balletic action style in full view (and yes, there are pigeons as well – but they have a much larger part here than in any other Woo film). The battle sequences are stunning to behold, but it’s not all testosterone either. There’s Zhou Yu’s pacifist wife, Xiao Qiao (newcomer Chi-Ling Lin), who many in Cao Cao’s army say is the true reason he wants to win the Southlands, and who actually pays a visit to Cao Cao to plead with him to stop the war. And there’s also Sun Quan’s feisty sister, Princess Shangxiang (Wei Zhao, Painted Skin), who insists on taking part in the war and succeeds in infiltrating the enemy’s base, posing as a male soldier as she spies and sends vital information back to Zhuge Liang via carrier pigeon. There’s so much going on in this epic film that you don’t even notice the time passing up until the fierce and fiery final battle of Red Cliff.

John Woo had dreamed of making this picture for twenty years, and the love and dedication he had for the story shines through in every aspect of Red Cliff, from the lush cinematography to the fine performances from the entire cast (most notably from Kaneshiro and Leung, who stepped in at the last minute for Chow Yun-Fat), from the intense action sequences to the brilliant sound design and excellent score. It must be noted that this review is for the original Chinese version of the film with a running time of a whopping 288 minutes, every single one of which is integral to the story. The international release of the film was whittled down to a mere (!) 148 minutes and it, too, has received critical praise, although it’s hard to imagine how Red Cliff can maintain its intensity and coherence after being cut almost in half, with only a voiceover to close the gaps. Powerful and important scenes like the tiger hunt, where Sun Quan realizes that he must fight this war despite the odds stacked against him, were completely excised for the shorter version. To truly experience and enjoy Red Cliff, there’s no other way than to settle down and become totally engrossed in the entire four-hour and forty-eight minute opus.

Not enough can be said about the technical presentation of the film on DVD. The 5.1 surround sound more than adequately displays the excellent sound design as well as the beautiful score, and the panoramic 2.35:1 widescreen presentation allows the viewer to marvel at the cinematography featuring some truly amazing vistas and battle sequences with thousands of soldiers. And the special features are also wholly engrossing.

The Making of an Epic: Red Cliff is a roughly thirty-minute documentary featuring behind-the-scenes footage interspersed with interviews with many of the cast and crew, including producer Terence Chang, as they discuss the making of the film and how much they respect and admire Woo’s dedication to the project. It gives the viewer a good feel for some of the lesser-known (but no less important) jobs on the set of a movie production.
Interview with John Woo: The Carrier Pigeon’s Flight from Concept to Creation is a four-and-a-half minute featurette wherein Woo explains one of the more innovative scenes and how he came up with the idea to end the first half of the film with a scene where Zhuge Liang releases a carrier pigeon from the southlands’ base of operations and we follow it across the river to where the enemies are camped.

Making Red Cliff: Trials and Tribulations is probably the best special feature on this two-disc extended version of the film. It’s a twenty-five minute mini-doc depicting just how hard a time the crew had making the film, from the inclement weather that forced them to shut down production for days at a time to an on-set accident that almost claimed the life of a crew member. It features a candid shot of a visibly shaken Woo as he watches the ambulance cart the crew member away.

HDNet: A Look at Red Cliff is a short promotional video that focuses on Red Cliff as it pertains to the high-def world, but it, too, features a couple of new tidbits not seen in the other features on the discs.
Also included is a gallery of storyboards that are best seen on a large-screen television in order to really make any of it out.

The two-disc extended version of Red Cliff is as close to perfect as a historical drama can get. At just under five hours long, the film is every bit deserving of the title ‘epic’, and excels in just about every possible category: cinematography, sound design, acting, editing, score, costumes, fight sequences, etc. It’s all here, folks, and it’s all good. Five hours well spent, to say the least. See it…it’s worth the time invested. Hell, you won’t even want it to end.

Movie rating – 5

Disc Rating – 5