Red Cliff

Red Cliff (2008) is John Woo's sprawling historical war epic, and you can watch it online on iFILM. As the Han dynasty crumbles, the ruthless chancellor Cao Cao bullies a weak emperor into a campaign meant to crush the last holdout kingdoms and rule a unified China.

His enormous army rolls over weaker forces and pins the survivors against a rocky bend of the Yangtze. The only way out is an alliance between two southern kingdoms that cannot win alone. Strategist Zhuge Liang, played by Takeshi Kaneshiro, rides south to win over viceroy Zhou Yu, played by Tony Leung, and the wary respect between two brilliant tacticians becomes a plan to beat a force of hundreds of thousands with cunning rather than numbers. Zhao Wei plays a princess running her own quiet game inside the enemy camp.

Woo left Hollywood to return to the source material drawn from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, mounting one of the most expensive Asian productions of its era: real cavalry by the thousand, a burning fleet, siege set-pieces choreographed like dance. Western audiences got a trimmed two-and-a-half-hour cut, while the full Chinese version runs close to five hours. Built for anyone who loved the battle craft of Hero or The Lord of the Rings. Stream Red Cliff (2008) online on iFILM.