Something totally positive:

I recently saw John Woo’s Red Cliff movies.

For those who do not know, Red Cliff, takes place during the Three Kingdoms period of China. The movie is based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is something like a Chinese set of Arthurian legends. However, it is more historical. It is also a work that along with the I Ching and a few others is considered to form the basis of a classical Chinese education.

Contemporary to the height of Rome, after the collapse of the First Dynasty, the Chinese Empire split into three waring Kingdoms. Truly vast battles were fought. Heroes rose and fell. Kingdoms were won and lost. Great strategists showed their genius.

John Woo does one episode from this saga a great deal of justice in these movies.

The cinematography is breath taking. The acting is superb. The battles make Braveheart look like a college movie. It’s Chinese, if they need 100,000 people making an army they get it…The music is breathtaking. There are simply too many scenes that radiate awesome.

The movie is as much a cultural event as it is an epic. One can just watch this as a great epic. Or one can see that this reflects a very culturally different way to look at making such an epic. The main characters in this are brilliant, educated and refined people. The great warriors are poets and calligraphers, medical doctors, strategists, generals and musicians all at the same time. But it is not done in an over the top way. This reflects a culture of honor and betrayal, learning and a non stagnant, cultured and brilliant, nobility, mobile in a violent age.

The movie is paced like a proper Asian movie. It has a story to tell, and it will fill in details and take its time. One of my favorite scenes has two strategists forming an alliance by playing music together (and the music is awesome). Another, involves a young ruler finding his courage on a tiger hunt.

For those who care about martial arts, the sword and spear work is phenomenal. For those who simply enjoy seeing fabulously beautiful Asian women being fabulously beautiful, again one can not go wrong. For those who simply want to be blown away by endless radiating waves of awesome…

Anyway the movie is called Red Cliff. Both parts add up to over four hours of pure epic bliss.

Do not get the dubbed and shortened version that was edited to appeal to an American audience with ADD.