Tuesday Timeshift #14: Red Cliff

Can’t be bothered reading an entire review? Check out my Haiku Film Review. Otherwise keep reading!

Let me commence by saying, I’m a girl.

Look call me sexist if you want, but this is a guy movie through and through.  That’s not a bad thing – but I’m not a guy so it really wasn’t for me.  So for the purposes of this review I will be channelling my partner in crime  – lets call him Batthew – as much as is humanly (and legally) possible without having anything surgery added and/or removed.

When I saw this, I was all a-flutter – and not just because I actually lob around a set of boobs wherever I go in reality.  Director John Woo intro’d the film.  In person.  In front of me.  If I stretched my little girly fingers out I could have groped him inappropriately.  John Woo!  Face Off, Broken Arrow, Mission Impossible II.  John Woo goddamit!  Lost in Space!  Oh, wait… Some might call these boy movies too.  Well, I cannot agree good sirs!  Fun is fun even if you are nut-free.  And this film had the largest budget EVER for a Chinese movie.  When those credits rolled I sat back all prepared for fun.  Thrills. Grandeur!  All round craziness.

Grandeur yes.  Thrilling fun? Not so much.  Strategic, warring, man-pride.  Chest-beating all round.  Ok so I still haven’t really found my inner manhood yet have I?  Look, Batthew loved it.  But he adores Battleship Potemkin, The Great Escape and Toy Story, for christs sake!  Damn men.

Don’t get me wrong.  I did enjoy much of it.  Just not all of it.  It was beautiful to look at, some great CGI scenes  and the sound was phenomenal.  I’m glad I saw it on the gigantor screen with super-sound-max-3000.  It’s a chest-thumping grand experience.  Batthew tells me all that war-ry stuff was great – you know, the hamster-style attack formation and the backward-scissor-lift defence formation and all that…  let me quote The Guardian “some of the best battle scenes since Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers”.  Frankly, I snoozed towards the end of that bit in LOTR too.

Yeah, go see it.  It’s fun.  And Red Cliff II will be out next year.  Take your nut sack and go see that sucker too. For those of us bereft of said sack, how do you feel about seeing Coco APRES Chanel instead?