In defense of John Woo's American period.
Friday sees the release of an abridged version of John Woo's new film, "Red Cliff," a two-part, five-hour epic condensed for American audiences into what's still an admittedly pretty entertaining regular-length feature. As Glenn Kenny notes at The Auteurs while comparing the two versions, what's gone is a lot of character detail and poetic flourishes. What's left is one ridiculously over-the-top battle scene after another, which is definitely fun if you want to see, say, something called the "Turtle formation." It is, however, inescapably silly, and I enjoyed it much the same way I enjoyed "Mission: Impossible II" and "Paycheck." The decade-plus Woo spent in Hollywood had its ups and downs. The ups included the peak violence of "Face/Off"; the downs, according to conventional wisdom, included practically everything else. "Hard Target" is fine for connoisseurs of Van Damme cheese (I dig it), but was not a dignified start to Woo's...
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