Red Cliff (Chi Bi) Reviews

Thank god that Woo left Hollywood. This is the masterpiece he was destined to make.

Full Review

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

The art of war done John Woo style, Red Cliff is an entertaining and grandiose return to form by the master of action cinema.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

The director's magnum opus.

Full Review

... a magnificent military epic with the scale of Lord of the Rings and the grand visual majesty of the recent wave of Chinese historical epics...

Full Review

After years of civil war, Prime Minister General Cao Cao attempts to unite the empire under the Han Dynasty by quashing two troublesome warlords.

Full Review

You may have the biggest flat-screen DLP monitor in the city, but Red Cliff will never look half as spectacular as it will on the big -- and I mean really big -- screen.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

John Woo's best work has always been mysterious to me. He makes operas - we don't need to understand the words to sense their power.

Full Review | Original Score: 86/100

The result is an awfully big and powerful movie, even in abbreviated form.

Full Review | Original Score: B+

It's not top-notch Woo, but it's also not Hollywood so-so Woo.

Full Review | Original Score: B

This is one of the best foreign language films of 2009. Woo demonstrates a storytelling style of swiftness and grandeur that has been compared to the samurai classics of Akira Kurosawa.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

A formidable prelude to an epic battle with resplendent effects and action spectacles.

As drama Red Cliff is overwrought. As spectacle, though, John Woo's latest is the real thing, an old-fashioned cast-of-thousands collision of armies.

| Original Score: 2.5/4

It reminded me of a Road Runner cartoon. The battlefield violence is essentially repetitious, but Woo -- the auteur as Wile E. Coyote -- introduces gimmicks ('the tortoise formation'), tricks and variations to keep things interesting.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

As hard as it tries, Red Cliff just can't muster the heavily filtered mythmaking of the war films of Steven Spielberg and David Lean. And thank goodness for that.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Woo has re-embraced his Chinese roots with brutal commitment.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

Flaws and all, you can't watch a frame of it without feeling that it has been generations since Hollywood tackled anything on this scale.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4

One of the most exhilarating action movies of the year.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5