You want epic? John Woo is here to bring you epic. A whopping seventeen years after his last truly great film (Hard Boiled, for the record) and after an extended dalliance with Hollywood that, with the exception of Face/Off, produced duds like Paycheck and Windtalkers and turned the master film maker into a punch line for bad jokes thanks to a string of announced projects that would never come to fruition -- a trivia category in which he tops even Quentin Tarantino -- Woo returns to glory with Red Cliff. Yeah, he had to take his ball and go home to do it, but for the first time in well over a decade Woo has produced a film that truly merits the 'master' label he's been wearing all these years.

Things started nervously, if we're being honest. After a string of high profile flops, Woo somehow convinced mainland Chinese investors that a return home was just what the doctor ordered to revive his flagging career and convinced them to cough up the highest budget ever in Chinese film history. He also recruited literally thousands of actual soldiers from the Chinese military both to engage in massive-scale grunt labor and star as his period-set army, an army that he put through its paces in staggeringly large land and sea battles. Based on one of the most popular literary epics in Chinese history and with the biggest budget ever, if Woo flopped here it would be a truly spectacular failure and likely a career-ender. And the first headline to come from the set? Original star -- and lead in all of Woo's best films -- Chow Yun Fat walked off the set. Sure, Chow's turned into a bit of a prat in recent years and shown consistently bad judgment in his film choices but the Chow/Woo reunion was a key selling point and this did not bode well. So Woo went out and talked him back into the part. And then Chow walked off again, this time permanently replaced by Tony Leung (In The Mood For Love), another Woo veteran originally eyed for a different role. So the start was not promising. And the end? The last headline to come off set was of a stunt man being killed while filming one of those massive naval scenes with the second unit -- not at all the sort of press Woo or the film needed.

But the result? The result is spectacular. The highest grossing film in Chinese history on its release -- it was beaten earlier this year by a romantic comedy, of all things -- and also a huge hit in Japan and Korea thanks to smart pan-Asian casting, Woo's Red Cliff is an absolutely massive spectacle, an epic in every possible sense, one that weds palace intrigue and soap opera melodramatics with literal cast-of-thousands battle sequences. The film -- and the originating story -- is so big, in fact, that in Asia it was released as two full features just to allow Woo to include all the plot details and character moments that those familiar with the source material would demand. For us here in the west, Woo has personally overseen a much leaner version -- lean still coming in at 140 minutes -- that streamlines affairs considerably while still giving you everything you could want.

An incredible cast -- Leung is joined by Takeshi Kaneshiro (Chungking Express), Chang Chen (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and Shido Nakamura (Letters From Iwo Jima) -- coupled with incredible art direction, an epic sized story backed by an epic sized budget and a director suddenly back on top of his game. The only thing lacking is an epic sized release but while Red Cliff doesn't stand a chance at knocking the latest Twilight off its perch it is still by far the best of this week's theatrical offerings.