Two Cents is a Cinapse original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team curates the series and contribute their “two cents” using a maximum of 200-400 words. Guest contributors and comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future picks. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion. Would you like to be a guest contributor or programmer for an upcoming Two Cents entry? Simply watch along with us and/or send your pitches or 200-400 word reviews to [email protected].
Any cinephile worth their salt is going to have a soft spot for epic pictures. The grandest tales told on the biggest screens with the hugest visuals conceivable to mankind, and the runtimes to match. This month’s “Epics Revisited” programming highlights the Cinapse team’s curated list of some of our top films that were significantly altered (and improved) by their Director’s Cuts. Often these are titles that are drastically different than what was initially released theatrically.
The Pick: Red Cliff (2008)
We’ll kick things off with the remarkable Red Cliff from master director John Woo. This international cut of the film wasn’t widely released in the United States theatrically, instead dropping here with a 2 hour, 28 minute cut that while impressive in scope and visual confidence, wasn’t frankly all that memorable. What we’ll be covering is the 2 part “international cut” of the film, which clocks in at 288 minutes (nearly 5 hours) and transforms a solid collection of big screen battles into China’s Lord Of The Rings and one of the great films of John Woo’s unforgettable and impossibly influential career.
Featured Guest
Mike Scott – Action For Everyone Podcast
The list of masterpieces from Hong Kong’s action maestro John Woo is long and distinguished, including A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, Face/Off, and the film that many consider the greatest action movie of all time: Hard-Boiled. But while the greatness of these movies is undeniable, I actually think it is a lesser celebrated Woo film that is his true masterpiece. 2008’s Red Cliff is the culmination of Woo’s entire career. Every theme of romantic brotherhood, heroic sacrifice, and duty to those who you care about reaches its apex in this 5 ½ hour epic. It is essential viewing for any Woo fan.
Based on part of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of China’s “Four Great Classic Novels,” Red Cliff finds Woo returning to China after his foray into Hollywood. But where Woo’s classics from the 80’s Hong Kong Golden Age were gritty and scrappy, Red Cliff sees Woo bringing all of the skills he picked up working on mega-budget movies like M:I 2 and Windtalkers. No Woo movie has ever had this scope or scale, nor has one looked this gorgeous. It’s not an exaggeration to say it rivals the Lord Of The Rings trilogy.
Woo is known for hooking his actors up, and Tony Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro have arguably never looked better than they do here. There is an entire subplot where they place a bet and the loser loses his head, but it never comes across as sadistic or horrifying. It’s simply Woo men doing what Woo men do. Leung and Kaneshiro capture that same sense of romantic brotherhood that made Chow Yun-fat and Danny Lee so amazing in The Killer: rivals to friends to brothers.
Red Cliff was released in China in two parts and that is the version to watch. It did get a U.S. theatrical release but almost half of it was removed. If you don’t have familiarity with the story of Red Cliff it already can be hard to follow, meaning the U.S. version is incomprehensible. But the full version is an expertly paced epic filled with wild battles you could never have imagined seeing on the big screen (the tortoise formation battle has to be seen to be believed). Red Cliff isn’t just a masterpiece, it’s THE masterpiece from one of the best to ever do it.
(@A4EPodcast on X)
The Team
Ed Travis
John Woo is one of the most influential directors of my life, and at various times he would have been considered my all time favorite. Most would say that Woo’s earlier late 1980s work in Hong Kong was his golden era, or more mainstream Western audiences might feel that his US blockbuster output like Face/Off and Mission: Impossible 2 were his peak. And yet, in 2008, Woo created Red Cliff, a film I believe to be ripe for rediscovery and reevaluation as a latter-era Woo masterpiece. Frankly, most Westerners have probably never heard of Red Cliff at all, and if they have, or if they’ve actually seen it, then they’ve seen the massively truncated 148 minute version. This is the version I saw initially, deeming it to be solid if unmemorable work from a master.
We are here, however, to discuss an admittedly daunting 288 minute (almost 5 hour), 2 part epic version of Red Cliff that is simply staggering in its scope, scale, and exploration of many of the great themes of Woo’s career. As a Woo film, it is a late-period master stroke featuring multiple sequences and set pieces homaging his trademark brotherhood, heroic bloodshed, and even his inclusion of doves/pigeons. (A musical showdown is a highlight in the first half).
As an epic war film, it deserves consideration alongside the likes of The Lord Of The Rings for how massively scaled, beautifully choreographed and executed it all is. I won’t spend much time in my brief write up recapping plot, but the brotherhood and playfulness between superstar Tony Leung’s Commander Zhou Yu and megahot Takeshi Kaneshiro’s strategist/philosopher Zhuge Liang is the backbone of the film, pitted against the formidable Admiral Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi) who has the power of the Empire behind him and the world’s greatest naval fleet at his disposal. As the nuance of battle and strategy plays out, Woo powerfully develops the humanity of his cast and the massive runtime is dedicated as much to interpersonal relationships, trust building, and personal hurt and grievances, as it is to complex naval maneuvering and battle formations. It’s all undergirded by characters living out their philosophies and building or breaking alliances based on their character as human beings. And let me tell you, the result is a hugely satisfying, confidently helmed epic that is never once boring and which devours every minute of its 5 hours to delight and entertain and inspire its audience with spectacle of the grandest scale matched only by the heroes and villains willing to sacrifice themselves or others for their places in history.
If ever there were a film ripe for rediscovery as an under regarded masterwork by one of cinema’s greatest titans, John Woo’s unabridged Red Cliff is it.
The closer you look at the mammoth 2-part Red Cliff epic, the more impressive a confluence of talent it is. John Woo reteaming with his Hard Boiled collaborator Tony Leung to adapt part of China’s legendary Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a hell of a pitch, but between a cast of heavy hitters like Takeshi Kaneshiro and Zhao Wei and a lavish historical production including the late legendary Corey Yuen on action design and 2nd unit duty make for a genuine marvel. Red Cliff balances an ensemble cast of dozens with political machinations and military stratagems alongside gorgeously quiet repose and epic action with a grace that makes it seem almost effortless.
Charting an alliance of Southern warlords against devious chancellor Cao Cao (Fengyi Zhang), this nearly five-hour enterprise manages to be welcoming to new audiences, painting its cast of legendary heroes and villains broadly enough to be recognizable even if you’ve never so much as played a game of Dynasty Warriors. The film revels in emotional clarity even as it also revels in Woo’s filmmaking trademarks – with slow motion, freeze frames, and narratively integral doves woven between animal and elemental symbolism. Woo’s trademark operatic tone is played at arguably his most romantic, and his crew’s command of the spinning plates in this movie rivals the synchronicity in Hard Boiled.
And I really can’t stress enough how absolutely sick the set pieces are. Yuen is no stranger to high-flying wushu action (having helped bring it into the modern era back in the ‘90s), but tones things down slightly to match the more grounded large scale tactics of the armies involved. The cumulative result is easily Woo’s best film in more than 30 years. While there have been plenty of epics chasing the highs of Gladiator & The Lord of the Rings, this is one of the only contenders that can claim to reach similar heights.
I regret that I still remain a John Woo novice. Before Red Cliff, the only films of his that I’d seen were Paycheck and Mission: Impossible 2–films that seem to be among the most polarizing in his filmography, even though I found a lot to enjoy in both. I’m happy that Red Cliff gave me a new opportunity to further my Woo education–especially since this mammoth period film was a stunner on so many levels.
It’s a film that feels meticulous in its romanticism, recreating battles during the Three Kingdoms era of Chinese history in vivid and staggering detail while never losing sight of the historical figures who command these set pieces and the complex relationships that give us an emotional connection to such spectacle. The barbed yet ultimately brotherly relationship between Tony Leung’s Zhou Yu and Takeshi Kaneshiro’s Zhuge Liang evolves wonderfully across both parts, as Zhuge’s expert tactician and Zhou’s brave warrior foster each other’s skills in order to defeat a common threat, while the turbulent political landscape of early China suggests these allies may become enemies in time. Zhao Wei’s Sun Shangxiang was also a compelling presence whose intriguing espionage missions led to an unexpectedly grounding human dimension to the legions of soldiers both sides had at their command.
There’s a playfulness between battle scenes that drew me in, as characters strategized and anticipated each other’s next moves. It would be draining if all of Red Cliff’s nearly five-hour runtime was devoted to spectacularly-shot warfare; which made these creative sequences of sleuthing, weapon-stealing, and melodramatic betrayal such a shot of energy where it was needed most. A particular standout was the “theft” of arrows during a foggy naval encounter, one played for both laughs and cleverness as much as it was for action and drama.
These combined elements are what makes Woo’s staging of these massive battles so impressive–for all of their large-scale grandeur, Woo places his characters like figures on a chessboard, effectively illustrating the emotional stakes at the core of each action beat. A deft combination of practical destruction with early CG trickery (those ship explosions!), along with a fiercely beating heart to every battle sequence, more than justifies my fellow contributors’ comparisons to Peter Jackson’s equally epic Lord of the Rings trilogy.
I’m also grateful that this full-length version was my first introduction to the film–much like Kingdom of Heaven to come, I agonize to picture how a picture of Red Cliff’s scope could ever be condensed and released.
(@Gambit1138 on Xitter)
CINAPSE REVISITS OUR BEST FORGOTTEN EPICS
In September, dive into epic films in their directors’ uncut, definitive forms. These bold visions by our favorite filmmakers use every minute of runtime to immerse us in vast worlds and compelling stories. Join us by contacting our team or emailing [email protected]!
September 9th – Once Upon a Time in America: Extended Version (3 hours, 49 minutes)
September 16th – The Abyss: Special Edition (2 hours, 51 minutes)
September 30th – Kingdom of Heaven: Roadshow Director’s Cut (3 hours, 9 minutes)
And We’re Out.
