Breaking: John Woo Might Have Made Another Awesome Film (Finally)
In 1992, John Woo directed Hard Boiled, one of the finest action films ever. Then, he sucked for 16 or so years (please, please do not try to argue that Face/Off is anything but a disaster). Now Woo has made a historical Chinese war epic called Red Cliff, and if the trailer is at all accurate, holy shit it looks like it kicks ass. I don’t know if those masses of soldiers are CG or poorly paid extras, but you really ought to watch the HD version of the trailer over at Apple. Now Twitch says that Red Cliff was actually a two-movie saga in China, but the film has been edited into one movie for its U.S. release — and that the single movie version is far superior to the two-movie version. Even assuming the original version didn’t have any fluff (not bloody likely), assuming the editors just took the best bits to make the U.S. version, that should be one awesome goddamn movie, and one I’m looking forward to mightily.
About The Author
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.