Red Cliff

(2008)
Red Cliff is set in the summer of AD 208 at Xuchang, China, and is based on the events
surrounding the actual Battle of Red Cliffs. These were military battles that took place in China
between the end of the Han Dynasty and the beginning of the Three Kingdoms period. The most
captivating figure in Red Cliff is Prime Minister Cao Cao, who is responsible for launching the
conflict by influencing the youthful and naive Emperor Xian in the Imperial Court of the Eastern
Han Dynasty. He is powerful, knows how to communicate with others, and always appears to
know what to do in an emergency. Almost all of this may be stated of Zhu-ge Liang, the Chief
Military Advisor/Strategist for Emperor Xian's uncle Liu Bei, who fights Cao Cao and his war
machine.
Lui Bei and Cao Cao both have valiant battle thralls fighting for them in Red Cliff, but
none is more prominent or proved to be as brave as Zhao Yun, one of Lui Beu's generals. In Red
Cliff, almost as much care is put to the dialog and events between combat as it is to Yun's fight
scenes, costumes, and scenery. Characters fight for position, the upper hand, pairing, and
jousting throughout dialogues in many of these instances. As a result, you're occasionally
watching a fencing duel between onscreen characters, which is eerily similar to Bob Hauk and
S.D. "Snake" Plissken's conversation at the start of Escape from New York. The topics of these
"fencing fights" on Red Cliff range from persuading others of their worth to encouraging the
jaded. This is clearest in Red Cliff when Liang visits Sun Quan's court in southern China to
persuade him to join forces with Lui Bei following Bei's defeat at the Battle of Changban. In his
attempts to persuade Quan to join Lui Bei and go to battle against Cao Cao and his military
juggernaut, Liang displays and uses his rhetorical skills. Aside from fantastic language moments
like these and the battle situations in Red Cliff, there are a number of other memorable scenes.
One is a tiger hunt in which a certain character discovers courage, and the other is when Cao Cao
uses his imagination to reveal his true purpose for launching the war to the audience.
Sun Shangxiang, Sun Quan's sister, is largely responsible for the levity found inside Red
Cliff. Shangxiang is Quan's confidante and source of objective advice. She is one of the persons
who has inspired Sun, causing him to realize the truth about events in his past and present. She's
also a pressure point master who isn't hesitant to apply what she's learned when it comes in
handy.