The Glade 4.0

I watched this over the weekend. It's a movie about the a warlord trying to usurp the Han dynasty in China. Lots of action (directed by John Woo) and great acting (at least it seemed that way to somebody who doesn't speak Mandarin). Go see it.

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The Dude abides.

How red is this cliff? Is it red with... blood?

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I rented it. Maybe I watched it too late in the day but I fell asleep after they tricked the enemy into giving them a bunch of arrows.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

It's not a good movie if you don't get the background... Which is hard for a non-chinese backgrounded person.

There's essentially a really really long book on it, and it's normal to get 60+ episode tv series out of it. So to squish it into a movie, you miss out on a lot of the char building which is essential to the story.

The actors in red cliff are actually top asian actors from across hk, taiwan, china and japan. I don't believe the word play translates well into english.

I haven't read any books and I felt the character development was more than sufficient. My wife was also thoroughly entertained and she hates foreign flicks.

The only difficult part to watching the movie is remembering names that are totally unfamiliar. The pacing was good and I'm loathe to think of any scenes that weren't important to the central plot. The language and emotions portrayed by the actors created for very real and likable characters, including the antagonist.

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The Dude abides.

Actually, Wwen, its fire, not blood =P

I got exposed to the story by the Koei video game series Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Dynasty Warriors. In the games it was the Battle of the Red Wall, because of the wall of flames used in the movie's climactic scene. In the movie, it's the Battle of the Red Cliff because that's the name of the place.../shrug. The video games also emphasized Liu Bei as the main hero, while the movie seemed to be split between Sun Quan's main general and Liu Bei's advisor as the leading men.

The version I saw was dubbed in English. Unfortunately, this resulted in virtually every one of the actors having William Shatner Syndrome ("We should use better............tactics!"), which was a bit grating. In this case, I think I might have enjoyed the original Chinese dialogue with subtitles better.

The movie also seemed to have a very different pacing to it. I can't seem to put my finger on it directly, but the pacing definitely seemed "foreign" to me, and in this case foreign=slow. Given the size of the source story, this is understandable. But, as Lydiaa said, if you don't have much familiarity with the story in the first place, you might get a little antsy in some places, especially if you like the pacing of movies like the re-imagined "Star Trek".

Visually, the movie is a treat in places, but drab in others. The battle formations shown give you a great understanding of how BIG they are...but at the same time, it seems like all the soldiers are dressed in the same drab and dull colors, making you wonder how the hell these guys knew who to try to stick the pointy ends of their swords into sometimes.

I'm glad to have seen it...but it's not a movie I'll be doing a lot of repeat viewings of.

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Women are from Hoboken, men are from Trenton. ~ Jimmy Kimmel