I've been covering John Woo's Red Cliff for almost two years now. It's a major achievement in the history of Chinese cinema and a thrilling epic war film. Cliff was released a few months apart in China, with the first installment hitting timed to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Instead of Red Cliff, we filthy Americans got The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Does anyone remember that Mummy 3 existed at this point?
Red Cliff tells the story of one of (if not the most) famous and notable battle in Chinese history. It takes place early in the third century CE, and supports a full load of main characters and subplots without coming remotely close to turning into Finnegan's Wake. The movie touches on love, jealousy, feminism, philosophy...a little of everything is folded into an epic battle narrative. Tony Leung (In the Mood for Love) and Takeshi Kaneshiro (House of Flying Daggers, The Warlords) headline the epic more than capably.
In many ways, Red Cliff was a coming together for many of the big names in the Chinese industry as well as a catalyst for career explosion in a few cases (thus far). Vicki Zhao (Shaolin Soccer, the upcoming 14 Blades), one of the female leads, would go on to star in a big-budget production of Mulan (available for import as we speak).
The only possible hurdle still out there for getting this in front of actual eyes is the fact that there are eight different retail SKUs of Red Cliff between DVD & Blu-ray as of this Tuesday (23 March). They break down thusly: (1) the full original cut including both Part I and Part II, (2) Part I only, (3) Part II only, and finally (4) the condensed "international" cut. It really baffles me why they issued single SKUs for Part I and Part II individually.
These aren't Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, this is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows A and B. Anyone who wants Part I will want Part II. There's less and less shelf space out there by the day due to declining home video sales, so why offer four redundant options?
Clearly, the choice for the discerning consumer is the Original Cut. Unfortunately, the "international" chop-down has the more sexed-up, action movie cover and may result in a pile of "I got the wrong one, and I know it's opened, but there's like eight of these things and it was an honest mistake" trips to Best Buy. I'm assuming most mass-market retailers are only carrying the "international" version, DVD-only.
My only other sticking point on this release is that the same English language dub track is the default audio track just as on other foreign language releases from Magnolia. On the upside, that means the only negative notes I have are on packaging (materialistic and meaningless) and a menu option that takes all of 20 seconds to change.
In the transfer department, I've only seen three of the eight different options (Blu-ray Original Cut and DVD International), so I have less than comprehensive knowledge of how it all looks. My comparative knowledge comes from an relatively long-ago viewing of parts I & II on Hong Kong Blu-ray and current R3 DVD copies I have of the same.
The US DVD of the international version does suffer from compression artifacting in areas one would expect from a 2.5-hour movie on a dual-layer DVD: any dark scenes, the "tortoise" battle scene with all the dust blowing around, and so on. I imagine that's much less a problem on the Blu-ray, but not having seen it, I can't be certain.
The US Blu-ray Original Cut movies look just as I remember the Hong Kong discs looking, and are probably from the same HD mastering. It's utterly resplendent and receives my highest recommendation with the only qualifier being that I'm not all the way through both parts yet. If my opinion changes, you'll see an update in the following week.
Extras include The Making of an Epic: Red Cliff and an interview with John Woo. There's the Magnolia/Magnet standard HDNet promo for the movie and some storyboards, but the two featurettes are the actual meat here. Amazon has the only edition you should consider at the "best price I can find" of $25.49.