San Francisco Chronicle by Amy Biancolli

Anyone who enjoys stylized hyper-violence should be enthralled by this long, sweeping, murderously vivid dramatization of ancient Chinese warfare, circa A.D. 208.

Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern

The immensity encompasses such variety, subtlety and intimacy that you may find yourself yearning for more.

Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea

This is magnificent filmmaking, and a magnificent film.

Washington Post by John Anderson

Red Cliff is a dichotomous beast: The computer-generated imagery that makes so much of it possible is served up in heaping, state-of-the-art portions, but the results occasionally border on the cartoonish. At the same time, Red Cliff is a classic tale that gets a classicist's treatment.

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

The spectacular battle scenes are the engorged heart of the delirious adventure. But Woo also gets maximum romantic value from Tony Leung as a war hero married to Chiling Lin as the tea-pouring beauty.

Portland Oregonian by Shawn Levy

Woo's hand is sure and his eye, as ever, finds beauty in everything, even death.

Village Voice

Red Cliff exudes a physical grandiosity that few movies of the past 20 years have attempted--no matter that Woo, even at his best, is still more at ease with down-and-dirty action than epic pageantry.

Empire

Camp, over-the-top and entirely unbelievable: in short, the best thing John Woo has made in years.

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

It's a movie on the Hollywood scale that has so much of the Asian spirit. It has drawn the Asian audience back to the movie theater.

Variety by Derek Elley

Balances character, grit, spectacle and visceral action in a meaty, dramatically satisfying pie that delivers on the hype and will surprise many who felt the Hong Kong helmer progressively lost his mojo during his long years stateside.

Empire by Ian Nathan

Camp, over-the-top and entirely unbelievable: in short, the best thing John Woo has made in years.

Village Voice by Scott Foundas

Red Cliff exudes a physical grandiosity that few movies of the past 20 years have attempted--no matter that Woo, even at his best, is still more at ease with down-and-dirty action than epic pageantry.

New York Post by V.A. Musetto

A scrumptious war movie.

The Hollywood Reporter

A prelude that provides the beams and columns for the narrative framework, but with a few decisive and spot-on action spectacles, it sufficiently kindles expectations for the climactic clash in Part 2.

The New York Times

While handsome and intelligent and perfectly easy to sit through, never really approaches the visceral tug of Mr. Woo’s Hong Kong hits.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein

Any war picture in which the heroine stalls the villain with a quiet, painstaking tea ceremony until the wind shifts direction and the good guys can firebomb the bad guys into oblivion is too ineffably Zen not to love.

Time Out by Joshua Rothkopf

For all his brilliance with choreography, Woo is flummoxed by the thousands of actual human extras, though there’s no denying his commitment to the finer points of battle tactics (yawn).