It’s weird but just the other day I was pondering to my wife whatever became of John Woo.  We haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since 2003’s “Paycheck” with Ben Affleck.  Now, I’ve personally never been much of a John Woo fan.  I don’t really dig those slo-mo, Chinese style action shots that he was once so fond of.  I did think he did a pretty decent job on “Mission: Impossible II.”

John Woo Takes On The Battle of Red Cliffs

At any rate, it’s interesting that I was just wondering about him and today I get the teaser trailer for his newest flick called “Red Cliff” (English translation).  The trailer is without English and without English subtitles and I don’t speak or read or understand Chinese so I have no idea what is being said.  But then, not a lot is really being said.  Just a lot of sword play and massive ancient battle scenes.

“Red Cliff” is set during the Three Kingdoms period of Ancient China (around 208 A.D.) and it tells the story of the Battle of Red Cliffs where a force of fifty thousand defeated an army of nearly one million.  “Red Cliff” is supposedly the most expensive Chinese film ever made, costing an estimated $80M in US dollars.

“Red Cliff” was once to star Chow Yun-Fat but he dropped out over some sort of disagreement with John Woo (they couldn’t decide whose American movies were worse?).  So now, Tony Leung Chiu Wai stars, along with Takeshi Kaneshiro, and Wei Zhao.

Yeah, I don’t know any of them either.

John Woo’s “Red Cliff (赤å£Â?)” Teaser Trailer

Watch it on Yahoo Taiwan.From the IMDB:
In 208 A.D., in the final days of the Han Dynasty, shrewd Prime Minster Cao Cao convinced the fickle Emperor Han the only way to unite all of China was to declare war on the kingdoms of Xu in the west and East Wu in the south. Thus began a military campaign of unprecedented scale, led by the Prime Minister, himself. Left with no other hope for survival, the kingdoms of Xu and East Wu formed an unlikely alliance. Numerous battles of strength and wit ensued, both on land and on water, eventually culminating in the battle of Red Cliff. During the battle, two thousand ships were burned, and the course of Chinese history was changed forever.

According to the trailer, the film will be coming out in the East (that is, far east…not the east coast) sometime this summer.  Right now it looks like there’s a release date of October 24, 2008 for Finland and December 4, 2008 for The Netherlands.  So far there is no US distributor.

Movies
John Woo, Red Cliff, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Wei Zhao

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