Elevator Music?

A Review

When John Woo said that he’ll like to make a Chinese film that the western audience can appreciate, he meant it.

The opening credits give it all away with the background story being translated into English alongside the Chinese version. The music hints of subtle reference to western music, with much less emphasis on traditional Chinese instruments. Actually, scratch that. I’m pretty sure that some of the music they played had distinctively jazz origins.


The dialogue has pretty much been diluted as in I can understand what they are saying without having to resort to subtitles. Solidifying the western act is the addition (because I’m pretty sure it wasn’t in the books or history) of Sun Quan’s out spoken, tomboyish sister in the traditionally testerone fueled story. It’s feminist (a term here defined by which people who advocate girl power. To a certain extent.) bait .John Woo deceptively reels the crowd in with Lord of the Ringsesque movie masquerading as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.


For the crowd like me, it worked.

I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the film because I did. It would be awfully hypocritical/wrong/unwise of me to criticize the movie with a heavy hand because:

1) I did not complete the reading of 《三國演義》despite being assigned to do so for my Chinese graded assignment last year. (Thank God for Wikipedia? And Mom)

2) Have you seen my Chinese grades recently?

The scenery was stunning although the CGI was a little lacking at parts. The cast turned in a decent performance although there were no real standouts. They played off each other and the chemistry between them made the film work. Of the leads however, Takeshi Kaneshiro seems to have gotten the better end of the stick. Against the enervated Tony Leung (Zhou Yu), he seemed to have that much more intellect. It was strange to see Tony on the battlefield anyway; it was clearly not his ground.

I wonder if the dynamics would have been different if Andy Lau had been given the role of Zhou Yu and Tony Leung the role of Zhuge Liang instead. Then again, that dynamic duo could get boring.

That’s my perspective but really, you can’t go watching this film without a second opinion so I’m letting the Chinese forums take the floor.

Orignial post here



《赤壁》（上）观后感

1、很血腥，很暴力，但不黄，虽然有几个镜头很暧昧。

2、尸体很多，和《投名状》有一拼。

3、火烧博望，火烧新野等展现诸葛亮智慧和军事才能的篇章都没有，诸葛亮好象只是个会耍嘴皮子的政客。本来舌战群儒时还可以补救一下，但可惜被一片乱哄哄的吵闹搅局了。

4、长坂坡一战，居然没有赵云夺青釭剑的镜头。

5、我记得赵云是把阿斗抱在怀里，而不是背在后背。

6、刘备没有摔阿斗，也没有哭。

7、张飞冤啊，用马尾绑树枝做疑兵，大闹长坂桥，吓死夏侯杰，喝退曹兵的英雄事迹都被埋没了。

8、关羽的形象有点老态，而且也不是很高大威猛。

9、甘宁什么时候改名叫甘兴了？

10书上明明写的是周瑜毁书斩使，电影里却变成曹操把东吴的使者杀了。

11、张飞在战场上的表现很突出，给我第一印象是象动画片里的绿巨人，第二印象是象《神奇四侠》里那个大块头怪物，横冲直闯，刀枪不入。

12、诸葛亮和孙尚香肯定有一腿。

13、诸葛亮的名言：硬拉是拉不出来的。未来两年内，这句话将一直是网络时髦用语。

14、曹操对小乔真是痴情啊！

15、原来曹操真是为了小乔才发兵南下的。

16、华南虎！又见华南虎！我怀疑华南虎是被孙权灭绝的。

17、鲁肃的形象距离我想的太远，也许是我要求过高了。能够把一半家产捐给孙氏，并在周瑜之后担任大都督的人，绝不是一般人。

18、诸葛亮需要冷静，周瑜需要冷静，我们大家都需要冷静。


For the record,if you didn't read that and I am not translating it, the above was pretty funny.


Stuff like this is the only reason why I am despondent about being bad in my mother tongue.

I am missing out on the sarcasm.