Saturday, October 3, 2009

Trailer Rush: Red Cliff

John Woo is a master of the action movie genre. There are so many things done within modern day action films because he was the first to do it. But even though he is a skilled action filmmaker, he also has a knack, much like Hitchcock or Spielberg, to take commercial pieces of cinema and make them personal reflections of himself.

The trailer for John Woo's latest, Red Cliff, has hit the internet. It is an epic based on the Battle of Red Cliff during The Three Kingdoms period in Ancient China. The film was already released all over Asia last year in two Parts, equaling a combined running time of 280 minutes. The film was extremely well received, the first Part outgrossing Titanic as the highest grossing film of all-time in China. The film will be released here in America on November 20th, both parts re-edited to only equal 148 minutes. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, it has yet to be seen. Take a look at the trailer and see for yourself:



Personally I'm really excited to see this film. It looks action packed, but not to any detriment of the story and the emotional structure of the film. As well it is visually stunning, the cinematography simply breathtaking. Then you get to the fact that the film stars legendary Chinese actor Tony Leung and this could truly be something special.

My only real reservation about this film is that so much from John Woo's original has been trimmed for an American audience, but then again all of the critics who have already managed to see Woo's American cut of the film say that the Western version has not lost any of the luster that made the original two Parts so spellbinding. So here I am hoping that this one delivers, because I really want at least one more good action film before the end of the year.

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