Epic, Action and War 2008

As 2008 is coming to an end, it's time to sum some things up. Epic, martial arts and action/war movies seemed to be popular this year in Asia. I'm providing some notes and recommendations here.

Asia cinema provided An Empress and The Warriors in March. Remember this piece? Kelly Chen as the warrior princess, not it's not Xena. An Empress and The Warriors didn't seem to impress that much, even though they added Donnie Yen as bait. No that didn't work, it takes more than actors to make a movie work.

Another epic film followed in April. Three Kingdoms Resurrection of The Dragon seems to be a better epic film, based on a well known novel and considered to be more serious. With some flaws such as unnecessary scenes with average actors that appeared for a minute or two, TKROTD failed to leave a big impression. It was just an average movie.

If this wasn't enough, Rob Minkoff's The Forbidden Kingdom got released the same month. Is this America's first attempt to make a good martial arts movie? With a story involving the monkey king and big names such as Jet Li and Jackie Chan it certainly looked good to me. This alternate story of the monkey king wasn't recognisable and likeable at all after so much editing. But this only wouldn't do according Minkoff, to appeal to a certain audience he found it necessary to add a white actor in this piece. This all together didn't work for me, what a disappointment.

No, 2008 didn't look promising at that point with these disappointing Asian movies. After these movies I was waiting to see a better movie in this same genre. Many people were anticipating John Woo's Red Cliff and I was one of them. Based on a huge event in Ancient China, popular actors and slightly related to the Three Kingdoms movie, no wonder it gained so much popularity before it's release! Red Cliff got released in July and it was definitely worth the wait. Due to its long runtime (over two hours), it seems to be a difficult piece to sit out. But the film is filled with spectacular battle scenes and acttractive characters.

Winner 2008: Red Cliff.

Yes the winner is clearly Red Cliff. Even though its entire story isn't completely shown in the first piece, as Red Cliff is split into two seperate movies, it's an excellent piece. The second part will be released in January, 2009.

Links:
Get your copy of Red Cliff now!

• Red Cliff (HK 2 disc)
• Red Cliff (Taiwan 2 disc)