With an US$80 million budget, which makes Red Cliff (赤壁) the most lavish Asian production to date, and a running time of more than four hours, which has seen the movie split into two installments, John Woo's (吳宇森) Chinese sword-and-sandals epic marks a triumphant return home for the director after 16 years in Hollywood.
Set in the Three Kingdoms period of China's history and centering on the legendary Battle of Red Cliffs (赤壁之戰), the epic sees Woo live up to his reputation as a masterful storyteller who reinvigorates a somewhat overworked and cliched genre with a good old-fashioned narrative developed by a rich cast of capable actors.
Set during the Han Dynasty's death throes, the film opens with shrewd Prime Minister Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi, 張豐毅) sending his million-strong army and a sizable fleet off on an unprecedently large campaign to forge a unified empire. Unable to match Cao's army, the benevolent exiled leader Liu Bei (You Yong, 尤勇) sends his military strategist Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro, 金城武) to secure an alliance with Sun Quan (Chang Chen, 張震), a southern warlord.
Buttressed by formidable warriors such as Zhao Yun, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu (Tony Leung Chiu-wai, 梁朝偉), Zhuge Liang successfully contrives to defeat Cao's vastly superior land force.
The victory proves to be Pyrrhic when the allied forces find themselves confronted by Cao's fleet of more than 2,000 warships anchored off shore. As the decisive battle looms, the two military masterminds scheme to secure victory.
Having opened in China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan yesterday, this is the diptych's first segment. The second part is scheduled for release in Asia in January of next year. The epic's lengthy running time is justified by Woo's grand narrative, which is told in the vein of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. With the filmmaking luxury of length, Woo defines his characters through anecdotes and slowly builds up the tensions and the contrasts between the two opposing sides, which culminate in a Good vs Evil finale.
Though there are lavish sets, spectacular choreography and massive battle scenes enhanced by CGI effects, it is the substantive narrative that sets Red Cliff apart from the glut of big-budget Chinese historical dramas that have been released in recent years.
Audiences quickly find themselves falling for the colorful ensemble of characters and become absorbed in the film's narrative threads, which are enlivened by imaginative camera work, fast-paced editing and superbly executed choreography. Even ancient China's military wisdom is made sexy and enthralling when Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung Chiu-wai take on the roles of master tacticians in a complex battle that involves a maze-like military formation.
Woo's unconventional interpretations of historical figures have caused controversy. Doubts serviced when the director cast Japanese-Taiwanese actor Takeshi Kaneshiro as one of China's most revered scholars. If audiences expect the heartthrob to exude Chinese virtue and be the living embodiment of intellectuality, they'll be sorely disappointed. Instead, the actor gives the crusty character Zhuge Liang a playful update, bringing a sometimes slightly sissy young scholarly strategist to the big screen.
The casting of Taiwanese supermodel Lin Chi-ling (林志玲) also raised a few eyebrows, but she manages to hold her own in the film.
With Red Cliff, Woo proves that China's rapidly developing film industry has both the know-how and talent to make Hollywood-style blockbusters. The country also has a seemingly inexhaustible archive of historical narratives to plunder at will, so expect many more to follow. Hopefully, more will be as well-made as this one.
No one saw it coming. Everyone — including the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — expected at least some of the recall campaigns against 24 of its lawmakers and Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) to succeed. Underground gamblers reportedly expected between five and eight lawmakers to lose their jobs. All of this analysis made sense, but contained a fatal flaw. The record of the recall campaigns, the collapse of the KMT-led recalls, and polling data all pointed to enthusiastic high turnout in support of the recall campaigns, and that those against the recalls were unenthusiastic and far less likely to vote. That
Behind a car repair business on a nondescript Thai street are the cherished pets of a rising TikTok animal influencer: two lions and a 200-kilogram lion-tiger hybrid called “Big George.” Lion ownership is legal in Thailand, and Tharnuwarht Plengkemratch is an enthusiastic advocate, posting updates on his feline companions to nearly three million followers. “They’re playful and affectionate, just like dogs or cats,” he said from inside their cage complex at his home in the northern city of Chiang Mai. Thailand’s captive lion population has exploded in recent years, with nearly 500 registered in zoos, breeding farms, petting cafes and homes. Experts warn the
A couple of weeks ago the parties aligned with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), voted in the legislature to eliminate the subsidy that enables Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) to keep up with its burgeoning debt, and instead pay for universal cash handouts worth NT$10,000. The subsidy would have been NT$100 billion, while the cash handout had a budget of NT$235 billion. The bill mandates that the cash payments must be completed by Oct. 31 of this year. The changes were part of the overall NT$545 billion budget approved
The unexpected collapse of the recall campaigns is being viewed through many lenses, most of them skewed and self-absorbed. The international media unsurprisingly focuses on what they perceive as the message that Taiwanese voters were sending in the failure of the mass recall, especially to China, the US and to friendly Western nations. This made some sense prior to early last month. One of the main arguments used by recall campaigners for recalling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers was that they were too pro-China, and by extension not to be trusted with defending the nation. Also by extension, that argument could be
RSS