Oh wow. What a difference 140-minutes can make! This extended, original cut of John Woo‘s Red Cliff is the real deal, playing twice as long and twice as awesome as the truncated US Theatrical Edition. Get that old single-disc version of the film up on Ebay and grab up this double-disc set if you care to see the film as it was meant to be seen!
All right, let me give some background on this film, to make some sense of why you have the choice of two Red Cliff Blu-ray sets. After years of floundering in Hollywood with less-than-spectacular films like Windtalkers and Hard Target, Woo returned to his native China to craft an epic cinematic re-telling of the battle of Red Cliff, famously chronicled in the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms (14th Century AD) but adapted here from the historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms (3rd Century AD). The film is so grand in length, as well as scope that it was released in two parts in China, only being edited down to a single, shorter film for release here in North America. I reviewed the single-disc Blu-ray of the edited Theatrical Edition previously (read the review here) and found it to be exceptional despite the obnoxious English-language narration on the Mandarin soundtrack and the clear absence of some subplot elements which made character motivation a tad unclear at times. As good as Red Cliff is in its much briefer incarnation, it’s just so much better uncut, with the addition of over a couple of hours of content resulting in a nearly 5-hour run-time that surprisingly flies by!
This Extended Edition Blu-ray is Red Cliff in its entirety, as it was presented in China, in two complete parts, with all of its guts left intact. And it’s wonderful! There are no shortcuts taken here, no narration to catch you up on the politics of the time, or English titles to guide you from location to location. This is the full story, with all the depth and texture you’d expect. Critical scenes glossed over in the US cut are played in full. Character interaction is given room to breathe. And battle scenes are fleshed out, action-for-action, and played for greater impact. This is not only one of the best films to come out of China in years, it’s one of the best all-around films to be released in recent memory. This full cut of Red Cliff proves that John Woo has still got it. And if you love film, you’ll go get it on Blu-ray!
The Red Cliff: Extended Edition Blu-ray features a similar transfer to its truncated cousin, the Theatrical Edition, which I described in my review as being nearly perfect. There’s nothing to grouse about here! Stunning photography rendered in a beautiful, vibrant encode with tons of detail and deep blacks. The big change here is in the audio department – there’s no English dub present! This time around, you either listen to the Mandarin Chinese DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track or you’re watching the film is silence. I’d opt for the Mandarin, if I were you, as it’s also a stunner! With a killer transfer and soundtrack, this could very well be your new home theatre demo disc!
In its effort to further outclass the single disc edition of the film, this Extended Edition of Red Cliff spreads its expanded set of special features over both discs, giving the encode more room to breathe. All the extras from the Theatrical Cut Blu-ray are back (HD Net preview, storyboards, trailers, etc.) including the incredible feature length ‘The Making of Red Cliff: The Long Road’. In addition, you’ll find the 18-minute ‘Storyboarding Red Cliff from Script to Screen with John Woo‘ on disc one and an expanded ‘A Conversation with John Woo‘, now running 45-minutes (27-minutes on the Theatrical Edition), on disc two.
Highly Recommended!
I got the US version. Its my new favorite blu-ray.
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