The prestige of the story doesn’t forgive the fact that John Woo lost his edge years ago, and that’s fully evident in every frame of this overlong epic.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 30, 2023

Tony Leung is powerful and involving as a sort of peaceful, poetic warrior who largely serves as the film's heroic figure.

| Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 21, 2020

The star, Tony Leung, isn't even handsome, but he's got this wonderful, intelligent, melancholy expression that's worth more than all the handsome there is.

| Oct 30, 2018

... its structure and satisfactions are more conventional, but the overall conception is as remarkable.

| Oct 9, 2017

Thank god that Woo left Hollywood. This is the masterpiece he was destined to make.

| Jul 27, 2012

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 18, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Cleaner and probably more rewatchable than Red Cliff 2.

| Mar 29, 2011

The director's magnum opus.

Full Review | Jun 29, 2010

... a magnificent military epic with the scale of Lord of the Rings and the grand visual majesty of the recent wave of Chinese historical epics...

| Mar 30, 2010

After years of civil war, Prime Minister General Cao Cao attempts to unite the empire under the Han Dynasty by quashing two troublesome warlords.

| Mar 25, 2010

It's like the most complicated game of Stratego ever. Still, if you used to while away Saturday afternoons watching martial arts epics on cable, you'll have a good time.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 12, 2010

You may have the biggest flat-screen DLP monitor in the city, but Red Cliff will never look half as spectacular as it will on the big -- and I mean really big -- screen.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 22, 2010

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 1, 2010

John Woo's best work has always been mysterious to me. He makes operas - we don't need to understand the words to sense their power.

| Original Score: 86/100 | Dec 28, 2009

The result is an awfully big and powerful movie, even in abbreviated form.

| Original Score: B+ | Dec 18, 2009

It's not top-notch Woo, but it's also not Hollywood so-so Woo.

| Original Score: B | Dec 15, 2009

This is one of the best foreign language films of 2009. Woo demonstrates a storytelling style of swiftness and grandeur that has been compared to the samurai classics of Akira Kurosawa.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 12, 2009

A formidable prelude to an epic battle with resplendent effects and action spectacles.

Full Review | Dec 11, 2009

As drama Red Cliff is overwrought. As spectacle, though, John Woo's latest is the real thing, an old-fashioned cast-of-thousands collision of armies.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 11, 2009