Red Cliff 2

I usually have a policy against watching Chinese films. Unlike Japanese stuff, I really don't get Chinese films most of the time. But then again, I heard that Red Cliff 2 speaks the international language of violence pretty well, so I figured I might as well watch it.

As expected, Red Cliff 2 was perfectly epic. The Chinese sure do have enough people lying around to fill the role of extras. I always did hope to see some truly epic battles on screen, with loads of extras and explosions and such. Guess it delivered. The sheer brutality of siege warfare was successfully brought to the big screen, imo.

That aside, I was more than mildly disappointed at the historical inaccuracy of the depiction of said combat. I mean...the testudo hardly seemed like a Chinese battle tactic. Moreover, there were some major inaccuracies in the way Zhugeliang was portrayed (he looked uncomfortably similar to Orlando Bloom for some odd reason. Poor Takeshi Kaneshiro!) given his lack of flair. Of course, I did not seriously expect historical inaccuracy. 300 was inaccurate, too, to be fair.

Overall, I figure the film would get 8/10. Probably strongly influenced by the sufficiently brutal battle scenes.