Thanks to my previous knowledge on "Sangokushi" or Three Kingdom Saga in Ancient China, I enjoyed the outstanding performance and the dynamic war scenes. The movie also succeeded to dramatizing Sun Tzu's "The Art of War". It was exhilarating to see outnumbered allies made full use of the strategy and fought against their common enemies and ran a dead heat.
Usually I do not expect story or drama stuff being described in the action movies but "Red Cliff" betrayed my expectation in a good sense. There were several scenes that touched my heart. For example, two genius war generals who belong to different lords met for the first time and they instantly understood that they were hard-to-get friends by playing musical instruments together, without using any tricks or politics.
In a newspaper article a veteran charismatic movie buyer from Avex had foretold "Red Cliff" would take academy awards right after he finished reading the script. Though his hitting ration was high, I was not sure if he would raise his ratio and salary in the future. But I was sure that Tony Leon had a dominating presence through the scenes and it was highly possible that he would be nominated in his acting.
Actually I saw a lady stood up to go to the rest room during the highlight, and some left before the end roll skipping the trailer of part two, and after the trailer I heard a girl behind me complain against her excited boyfriend about dozens of characters who had lost her. I thought some previous knowledge would be important to fully enjoy this historic war movie.
Basically the movie was created for everyone because John Woo focused on the battle of red cliffs which was one of the best highlights in the saga, cleverly avoiding another digest version. Also there was a brief explanation about history and people at the beginning being accompanied by easy-to-understand Japanese subtitles crafted by Natsuko Toda. Personally I wanted to give my big hug to John Woo, actors and actresses, all the staffs, and their accomplishment "Red Cliff" (Part One).
