Red Cliff (赤壁)

Tuesdays in Beijing is half-price movie day. Every Tuesday my friends and I get together either to watch a movie or have dinner somewhere nice. Last Tuesday, Marco and I watched “Red Cliff” at Wanda Cinemas. Ticket price was 35 per person during Tuesdays and 70 per person on other days.

Red Cliff is currently the hottest movie to hit town. I remember two Saturdays ago, Richard and I were so frustrated because we can’t find a cinema which offers Hancock.

The nice thing about this movie is even though it’s in Chinese, the English subtitles are well translated. The movie has a star-studded cast with a world-renowned director. The movie is based from the famous Chinese novel “Romance of Three Kingdoms”.

The movie has elements of action, romance, lust and humor. The story is about the battle between Cao Cao and the group of Liu Bei & Sun Quan. Liu Bei is a noble leader who has several loyal generals and a good strategist. They were driven off from Xinye in a battle at the beginning of the movie. Zhu Ge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) thought of setting up an alliance with Sun Quan (Chang Chen) to fight against the eight hundred thousand strong army of Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi). He was successful in getting Sun Quan’s support and assisted them when Cao Cao’s army headed to the Southern lands.

Red Cliff was commandeered by Zhou Yu (Tony Leung). He is known for his brilliance in naval tactics and music. His wife, Xiao Qiao (Lin Chi-ling) was the object of desire of Cao Cao and was the implied reason why he wanted to invade the south.

However, prior to the arrival of Cao Cao’s land army to Red Cliff. They were ambushed by the combined forces of Sun Quan and Liu Bei. Each of the generals were given a chance to showcase their strength and prowess. In the end, they won and headed back quickly to their camp as Cao Cao was seen moving towards Red Cliff by boat. Cao Cao’s naval fleet encamped at the land opposite Red Cliff and thus ended the movie with a “To be continued.” HEHEHEHE!!!

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