For this movie , there will be two main groups of audience. First, there'll be those who know little about the background, be it historical fact or the romanticized historical fiction <b>The Three Kingdoms</b>. At the other end of the spectrum, there'll be those… More
For this movie , there will be two main groups of audience. First, there'll be those who know little about the background, be it historical fact or the romanticized historical fiction <b>The Three Kingdoms</b>. At the other end of the spectrum, there'll be those who are familiar with the <u>Battle of Red Cliff</u> just as some people are familiar with <u>Camelot</u> or <u>Alamo</u>. A really smart thing though is taking two well-known anecdotes and running them parallel as reciprocal challenges between the two top-notch strategists <i>Zhou Yu</i> (<i>Tony Leung</i>) and <i>Zhuge Liang</i> (<i>Takeshi Kaneshiro</i>), each putting his life down for failing to fulfill his end of the bargain. Their assignments, respectively, are to trick <i>Cao Cao</i> into killing his two best generals and to secure a huge supply of arrows from heaven knows where. This is one of the best parts of the movie, filled with dramatic tension as well as relieving humour. Depicting the rivalry-cum-comradeship between two heroes who have great respect for each other is of course vintage <i>John Woo</i>. The heart and soul of the movie, the battle itself, is a joy to watch. At the helm, <i>John Woo</i> has again done something very clever ? removing the <i>Zhuge Liang</i>'s supernatural element of the original novel. <i>Zhuge Liang</i> attribute the critical event to the strategist's ability, be it an art or a science, to predict weather patterns. In enriching the movie for general consumption, <i>John Woo</i> has to create material for his two female leads almost out of a vacuum. He has in fact been quite successful, from the angle of dramatic appeal, albeit at the cost of some sacrifice of common sense and logic. This is a high quality, entertaining movie which <i>John Woo</i> has succeeded in creating by a very clever decision to concentrate on a simple agenda, <u>The Battle of Red Cliff</u>, despite the lure of numerous potential sub-plot.