HONG KONG -- As the first film to re-create the 208 . Battle of Chibi, the most famous military feat in Chinese history, John Woo‘s "Red Cliff" is a Pan-Asian project with the word "monumental" written all over it. The 140-minute first half that opened across major Asian territories is only 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 upcoming Part 2. The Western version will be a shorter, condensed one.

Costing $80 million and years in the making, "Red Cliff" is the most expensive Chinese-language picture ever mounted. Its investors likely are to recoup most of it from the Asian market, where the story has infiltrated school curriculum, computer games and manga.

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Although this is hailed as Woo‘s "homecoming" after his Hollywood tenure, hardcore disciples of his Hong Kong oeuvre will be straining hard to find the all-stops-out passion and sinewy machismo that ignited his bullet ballets such as "A Better Tomorrow" or "The Killer." Such signature themes as male bonding and David-and-Goliath face-offs still drive the action, but the functional script has dismantled much of the original story‘s dramatic intricacies and character complexities, then reassembled it into a easy-to-follow three-act structure.

The epic opens with ambitious Prime Minister Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi) browbeating the emperor of Han into authorizing a campaign to crush his enemies, Liu Bei and Sun Quan (Chang Chen) in their southern strongholds. In the first big action scene, most reminiscent of Woo‘s earlier SFX-free brute heroics, Gen. Zhao Yun (Hu Jun) single-handedly battles whole armies to save Liu‘s infant son.

The middle act replaces action with character interaction, focusing on Liu‘s strategist Zhu-ge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) persuasion of Sun Qun t