I watched the movie last night at Plaza Singapura Golden Village and felt that the movie was better than expected, even though there were a few things that still have room for improvement.
The movie sets itself in the context of an epic battle between the Han army led by Cao Cao and the alliance of between Liu Bei and Sun Quan. Brimming with hundreds of thousands of imperial troops, Cao Cao attempted to crush both the fatigued forces of Liu Bei and the inexperienced soldiers of Sun Quan at a place called Red Cliff so as to consolidate his plans to usurp the Han throne and became the Emperor himself.
Severely outnumbered by at least 8 to 1, both Liu Bei and Sun Quan formed an uneasy alliance (after much persuasion by Zhuge Liang from Liu Bei) and committed their very best warriors to fight off the overwhelming Han imperial troops.
I loved the battle scenes in the movie because those were flimed stroke by stroke, move by move, which clearly showed the skills of the real actors in the movie (they must have trained really hard for the movie) and I enjoyed the ingenuity behind those battle tactics and formations (especially the ones within the "tortoise battle formation) exchanged between Cao Cao, Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu. There were even a few scenes with situational and verbal humour between Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu over seemingly bizzare animal-related matters like horses, pigeons, tortoises but the zither duet between the two greatest military strategists of those times were very impressive as well.
The dialogue between the various characters, however, could have used more thought, cutting out redundancies, and some scenes like Sun Quan's tiger hunt scene were a bit draggy. All in all, I thought the movie lived quite up to expectations and I am looking forward to Part 2 where the great naval battle at Red Cliff would take place. I would give it a 4 star out of 5 particularly for its elaborate designs of the battle scenes as well as the beautiful scenery from which the movie was flimed against.
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