Victory is in the wind.

Red Cliff.

You know John Woo was the best action director of all time. Watch Hard Boiled and then tell me which action film is better. Then he came to America and did Hard Target – brilliant, but that’s because JCVD wanted to make a WOO/ASIAN film in the USA and not AMERICANIZE Woo. Then Broken Arrow – good, but you saw a bit of Hollywood creeping its way in. Face/Off next, same thing, good but you can tell there was influence, less action etc. Then every movie after that sucks. All American generic crap. He goes back to Hong Kong and then we get Red Cliff – a bloody masterpiece and the directors best film.

Woo should now just retire, he will never beat this movie. I would go so far as to say its one of the greatest masterpieces of film making. I would say its close to Ben Hur and Lawrence of Arabia! This epic wins on all counts! Acting, story, sets, costumes, effects. Effects – I have this on Blu-ray and with the exception of Speed Racer (which is all cgi) this is the best Blu-ray you can buy. Every shot of this film is awesome and it’s almost 5 hours long.

I know that will turn away some viewers, but if you do turn away then you are missing one of the best films of all time.

Wow, what an epic. The battle sequences in this film are stunning. I have never seen such awesome tactics used in film. Even the armies were distinguishable from each other. Usually you cant tell who is fighting who, but the sequences are filmed so well that you actually figure out what is happening.

This is a great film and a big achievement in visual effects. Even if you think it’s boring (if you do, grow an attention span) you will still appreciate the awesomeness of the visuals. So wicked. The characters too are all excellent and I really liked Zhao Yun – the guy who rescues the baby on the battlefield (see Hard Boiled for a similar scene) and Tony Leung was wicked too – as always.

This is a winner.

Too bad it took me this long to watch it. Ill be watching it again next weekend!

5/5

J-Man.