Movie Review 18: Red Cliff 2: More Brains less Muscles

Title: Red Cliff (part 2)

Director: John Woo

Running Time: 2 hours 11 minutes

Genre: Action, Drama

Finally, the second part of Red Cliff came out. After my disappointment in the part 1 of the movie, I wasn't expecting much. While the part 1 of the movie had more individual fighting, the second part of the movie focus more on strategies and group battle.

This second and final part of the Red Cliff movie is about how Zhou Yu (Tony Leung), Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro), Sun Quan (Chang Chen), Liu Bei (You Yong), Guan Yu (Ba Sen Zha Bu), Zhang Fei (Zang Jinsheng) and Zhao Yun (Hu Jun) work together to fight off the vast army of Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi).

Basically, this movie focus more on Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang while the others have taken a backseat in the fighting of Cao Cao's army. Here you can see the famous plan of how Zhuge Liang "borrowed" more than a hundred thousand arrows from Cao Cao. Also, you will also see the fiery display of ship burning (foh siu lin wan suen)... translated from Cantonese meaning "the burning of multiple ships"... although I doubt that those are really the methods used to burn Cao Cao's ship in the olden days (eg. usage of flaming ramming ships and kamikaze bombing men)

Basically, I think that this second part of the movie contained more substance than the first part. However, it still has the irritating repetitive scenes when there is something brilliant to be shown. What I meant was, for example, during the first part of the movie, when the defending army used the sunlight reflected off their shields against the enemy, the director repeated that scene so many times that I was wondering if the film was caught in a loop or something :P. The same thing happened in the second part too... it's as if the director is trying to lengthen the movie by repeating these things... or maybe because there were so little brilliant scenes that he had to focus on these rare few :P.

Anyway, once again, you must be reminded that this movie is just loosely based on the history. Basically, Zhou Yu did not let Cao Cao go when he defeated Cao Cao's army. I mean, how stupid would one have to be to let such a powerful enemy go? It basically meant that Zhou Yu is responsible for the deaths of the people Cao Cao will kill in the future! It's like, hello... you won, he lost... so kill him already! I don't see him halting when he hacked his way through the army... I think he just want to show off to his wife :P. In truth (I meant what that was recorded in history books), Cao Cao escaped before his army was fully defeated and managed to return to his country even though there were numerous ambushes along the way... yup, I'm a Cao Cao supporter... so what, sue me :P. He lost a battle but he won the war!

And oh, I actually felt sorry for Zhao Wei when her temporarily short-lived boyfriends was killed... though you would have to be an idiot if you did not predict that the first time they met :P.

So, in conclusion, this second part is acceptable to be watched but unfortunately, you will need to watch the first part before watching the second part to understand the movie.

Observation: I had no idea what the poem recited by Cao Cao meant except for the last sentence :P.

Bottomline: Better than the first. Watchable.

Bamboo Rating: 3.0 / 5.0