Chi bi (2008)

Director: John Woo

Cast: Tony Leung Chiu Wai as Zhou Yu (as Tony Leung), Takeshi Kaneshiro as Zhuge Liang, Fengyi Zhang as Cao Cao, Chen Chang as Sun Quan, Wei Zhao as Sun Shangxiang, Jun Hu as Zhao Yun, Shido Nakamura as Gan Xing (as Shidou Nakamura), Chiling Lin as Xiao Qiao (as Chi-Ling Lin), Yong You as Liu Bei, Yong Hou as Lu Su, Dawei Tong as Sun Shucai, Jia Song as Li Ji, Ba Sen Zha Bu as Guan Yu, Jinsheng Zang as Zhang Fei, Shan Zhang as Huang Gai

Thanks to my previous knowledge on "Sangokushi" or Three Kingdom Saga
in Ancient China, I enjoyed the outstanding performance and the dynamic
war scenes. The movie also succeeded to dramatizing Sun Tzu's "The Art
of War". It was exhilarating to see outnumbered allies made full use of
the strategy and fought against their common enemies and ran a dead
heat.

Usually I do not expect story or drama stuff being described in the
action movies but "Red Cliff" betrayed my expectation in a good sense.
There were several scenes that touched my heart. For example, two
genius war generals who belong to different lords met for the first
time and they instantly understood that they were hard-to-get friends
by playing musical instruments together, without using any tricks or
politics.

In a newspaper article a veteran charismatic movie buyer from Avex had
foretold "Red Cliff" would take academy awards right after he finished
reading the script. Though his hitting ration was high, I was not sure
if he would raise his ratio and salary in the future. But I was sure
that Tony Leon had a dominating presence through the scenes and it was
highly possible that he would be nominated in his acting.

Actually I saw a lady stood up to go to the rest room during the
highlight, and some left before the end roll skipping the trailer of
part two, and after the trailer I heard a girl behind me complain
against her excited boyfriend about dozens of characters who had lost
her. I thought some previous knowledge would be important to fully
enjoy this historic war movie.

Basically the movie was created for everyone because John Woo focused
on the battle of red cliffs which was one of the best highlights in the
saga, cleverly avoiding another digest version. Also there was a brief
explanation about history and people at the beginning being accompanied
by easy-to-understand Japanese subtitles crafted by Natsuko Toda.
Personally I wanted to give my big hug to John Woo, actors and
actresses, all the staffs, and their accomplishment "Red Cliff" (Part
One).