Red Cliff (15)

WOO by name and "woooo" by nature-this Chinese battle epic from Hard Boiled and Face/Off director John isn't short on eye candy.

It's 208 AD, during an early Dynasty (shortly before Linda Evans pushed Joan Collins into that lily pond, if memory serves), and the states of Imperial China are at war.

Prime Minister Cao Cao (Fengyi Zhang) gets the hump over the Wu and Xu Kingdoms palling up, so sends an army of 800,000 soldiers and 2,000 ships to sort them out.

Cue a monster 2½-hour storm of skirmishes, ambushes, and one of the biggest and most visually astonishing battle scenes ever staged, as all three armies converge on Red Cliff itself.

Red Cliff is one lengthy edit of two full-length Chinese films, and it shows. Character development is jettisoned for the action sequences, so it feels too short and too long at the same time.

I don't want to undersell the sheer awesomeness of the battle scenes-fans of historical Far Eastern flicks will get a serious Wing Chun roundhouse kick out of this.

But for all its grandstanding rucks and period detail, it doesn't have the crazy visual polish or the mental tree-walking pizzazz of a House of Flying Daggers or a Hero.

Still, if it's an eyeball-searing historical epic you're after, then Woo's your daddy.

OUT FRIDAY

This article has 0 comments