Eye Candy #3 - "Red Cliff Part 1"

Red Cliff Part 1: I’m a gigantic John Woo fan, though more on the gun-fu side than his period pieces. Many people label this movie “epic” purely on length and sheer size of the production. And the film certainly is long (the total length is almost 5 hours with both parts), and with some 100,000 Chinese soldiers as extras, they’ve got the warm bodies to spare for staging. But ‘spectacle’ doesn’t equal ‘epic’, you can have one and not be the other. Based on “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms”, there are plenty of distinct characters and drama to spare, but there are artistic excesses that drag out the length unnecessarily. Sure, I know it’s based on a heavily fictionalized version of real events, where people demonstrate exceptional abilities, super strength, people leaping through the air, that sort of thing. I get that. It’s the same gag as “300”. But that doesn’t explain some of the choices made in editing and directing . For example, there are oft-repeated shots of the same individuals dying over and over again. That does nothing but slow the picture down, and with some 100,000 extras, you shouldn’t reasonably have to repeat a single shot. And is there really a need to get two “vast armada” shots in one picture, as if the first “vast armada” shot wasn’t enough to convince you the armada was vast? Also, some of the one-on-one battles with the generals go on forever and ever. Hey, John? Haven’t you ever heard of “always leave them wanting more?” Much of the dialogue is trite, and some of it is downright terrible (that could just be the subtitling - I have a hard time imagining that the various warlords of the era used “Great!” as their positive exclamation of choice). The acting is all over the place - some of them are obviously into it. Some, like Tony Leung, appear to be phoning it in. I’m going to rent part 2, but I am lowering my expectations. Woodchuck sez, “Was hoping for something a little more epic and less spectacle.”