FOR BETTER OR WORSE, the modern American action movie owes huge debts to a handful of filmmakers—Michael Mann, John McTiernan, James Cameron, the Wachowskis, Michael Bay, writer Shane Black. And then there's the crazily influential John Woo, whose Hong Kong shootouts starring Chow Yun-Fat—1989's The Killer and 1992's Hard Boiled—put him in a league of his own. But in '93, Woo came to America, and ever since, his IMDB page has been, eh, mixed: Hard Target, Broken Arrow, Face/Off, Mission: Impossible II, Windtalkers, Paycheck. While I'll openly admit to loving two of those films (Face/Off is probably the most preposterous movie ever made—it's like a two-hour long internet meme—and Mission: Impossible II features people jumping into the air on motorcycles and having a fistfight), for about 15 years Woo's movies have been kinda crappy. So to say that his latest, Red Cliff, is his best in a while is good news, but it isn't exactly a ringing endorsement.

An epic historical drama, Red Cliff was originally released in Asia in two parts, with a runtime of over four hours. The Americanized, CliffsNotes version clocks in at two and half hours, but even with its shortened length, impressive cinematography, and solid performances (from Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung, among others), it still feels sluggish.

Red Cliff's plot—in which various warlords join forces in order to halt the advancement of an eeeevil general—is certainly dramatic enough, with over-the-top action and pensive gazing into the distance (and, naturally, plenty of Woo's two favorite things on the planet, slow-motion and doves). But even Red Cliff's explosion-filled climax underwhelms, achieving neither the depth nor the splendor Woo's aiming for. Part of what made Woo's Hong Kong shoot-'em-ups so exhilarating was the sense that he was genuinely excited to be creating so much chaotic, operatic destruction; while Red Cliff is better than Paycheck or Windtalkers, one can't shake the feeling that Woo's phoning it in.