Friday, January 09, 2009

Movie Review: Red Cliff 2 《赤壁 (下)- 绝战天下》

Today is my off day so I took the opportunity to be one of the first to watch the movie since it's opening today at the big screens. There could be some spoilers in the review so if you want to keep yourself in suspense, read only the next two paragraphs.

I have always liked epic war movies so I thought this movie was quite well-made because it tried its best to balance character development, military ingenuity and cunning between characters, as well as friendship and humanity issues in the setting of a spectacular finale battle. Unfortunately, Part 2 sacrificed more of the action-oriented scenes of individual warriors on the battlefield and focused on the scale of the battle and effects of the fighting. The final parting scene of Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu could have been much better though.

Well, at least the morals of why wars and conquests are bad things are not forgotten the middle of all the dead that piled up as the finale battle pushed through. I remember one quote from Zhou Yu when he emerged victorious from the intense battle "In a war, we are all losers." The analogy of Xiao Qiao was also quite intelligently put - "Just like a cup of tea filled to the brim, a person brimming with ambition will eventually encounter a situation which empties his person's ambition."

Story: ****
Acting: ***1/2
Direction: ***1/2
Visuals: *****
Overall: ****

Part 1 was quickly recapped through a series of cut scenes to show viewers where the movie has left off - Zhuge Liang (military adviser for Liu Bei) was working closely together with Sun Shangxiang (sister of Sun Quan) using messenger pigeons to find out more about Cao Cao's (Prime Minister of Han Dynasty) military camp layout and plans.

Part 2 deviated quite some portions from the original Three Kingdoms but I supposed since it's a movie adaptation worth only 141 minutes, I would just go along with the new movie subplots rather than complain and whine about the deviations from historical records.

The movie showed a nice friendship subplot about how Shangxiang befriended a simple-minded soldier of Cao Cao during her disguised identity as a Cao soldier. There were also subplots such as: Zhuge Liang who made use of scarecrows onboard ships in the middle of a fog to "borrow" 100,000 arrows from Cao's fidgety naval archers; Zhou Yu (viceroy of Sun Quan's army) who deceived a miliary adviser of Cao, Jiang Gan, and stirred Cao Cao's suspicions to rashly execute Cao Mao and Zhang Yun (naval commanders who newly-surrendered to Cao Cao).

The final battle was very intense and tightly choreographed which was also the climax of the movie - it alone justified the ticket price. Expect - spectacular explosions, impressive infernos, storms of deadly arrows and pummelling rocks, cunning Roman-tortoise formations, heroic sacrifices of the valiant, military ingenuity and deception, dangerous stand-offs at swordtips and moving parting scenes of friends on battlefield.

For an epic war movie, I left the cinema contented.

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