Good production but fails to connect

After a brief and fairly successful sojourn in Hollywood, John Woo returns to Chinese cinema for this most expensive Chinese language picture ever, based on the historic battle of Red Cliff. It is a near three-hour abridgement of the original two-part film, specially edited and dubbed for the international audience. As a result, the film seems to have lost some of its character development and detailing while appearing a trifle choppy, overwhelmingly eventful and increasingly incoherent.

John Woo’s film is a liberal enactment of the events that brought about the end of the 400-year-old Han Dynasty, leading up to the period of the Three kingdoms. The script by Woo, Khan Chan, Kuo Cheung and Sheng Heyu encapsulates elements from history (Chen Sou’s third century chronicle), Luo Guanzhong’s ‘Romance of the Three kingdoms,’ concepts from Sun Tze’s ‘Art of War’ and some of their own imaginative meanderings into an impressively inventive stew that envelopes spiritualism, mysticism, ancient martial arts, guerilla strategies and war turf heroics.

The story begins in AD 208 with General Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi) seeking permission from Han dynasty Emperor Xian (Wang Ning) to lead a war expedition to curtail the rebellion of the southern war lords, Liu Bei (You Yong) and Sun Quan (Chang Chen) — and ends in the battle of Red Cliff by the banks of the river Yangzte where thousands of ships were set afire and thousands were killed. The tactics employed to win — be it predicting weather changes, capturing necessary supplies, spreading disease, goofy espionage and tea-making — are all rendered with aplomb.

The scale is expansive and majestic, there is certain voluptuousness in the visual dramatisation, battle choreography is mind-boggling, production design is exquisite and cinematography is breathtakingly vivid. Even the quicksilver mood and darkish tone are invigorating. But despite these technical pluses the film still fails to come good as a composite whole. The voice over is distracting, the dubbing is pretty shoddy and appears unauthentic, the narrative is overwhelmingly over-populated and the entire experience feels unsatisfactory. You may appreciate the expertise on display but as far as entertainment goes, this version of the film is disappointing.