Red Cliff

So yeah. I watched Red Cliff this evening as it recently came for me in the mail. AMAZING film. I ordered part two from Amazon Marketplace a short while ago. This film is epic in every sense of the word. It is gorgeously shot, edited, and acted. Tony Leung as Zhou Yu and Takeshi Kaneshiro as Zhuge Liang seem born to play their roles. The actors who play Guan Yu and Zhang Fei are fantastic. The biggest surprise came from Hu Jun who plays Zhao Yun Zilong. I had always viewed the person of Zhao Yun as well, boyish. Not so with Hu Jun. He played up the heroic masculinity. And it fit very well with the character. Long story short, you all need to go see this film. My only concern is that those of you who are not familiar with these characters from Chinese legend may be a little confused at first as the film presupposes, in my humble opinion, some knowledge on the part of the viewer as these characters like Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhuge Liang, and Zhou Yu are to the Chinese what Hamlet, Richard III, Horatio, Othello, Iago, and Brutus are to the English speaking world. They are embedded in our collective cultural consciousness. My advice: read up on the history of the Three Kingdoms and then watch this film. It's the best film of 2009 thus far. Go see it. Now.