I remember watching the original 2-part 4 hour Chinese version all in one sitting. I wish I didn't. I found it boring, though far less so then other recent attempts to portray Romance of The Three Kindoms, such as 2008s Three Kindoms: Resurrection of The Dragon. My main criticism of any such film though is that there is never enough Zhuge Liang. The guy is the one of the most badass tacticians/inventors in all of Chinese history (perhaps World history to boot), and yet he is always treated as a supporting/cameo role in any presentation of the Three Kindom conflict. His role is bigger in Red Cliff, but we still only get to see a tiny glimmer of his real brilliance. He needs at least an entire film to himself to do him justice.
But then that is the problem with Romance of The Three Kindoms, the novel is so vast that even a four hour epic can only serve to summarise the introduction (the rebellion at Red Cliff). I believe any movie adaptation, Red Cliff included, is doomed to be crippled by its own ambition and scale. Red Cliff is a more accomplished epic, but the EndingFatigue ruined it for me. I'd recommend the 21/2 hour Western release instead.
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The Chinese version of Troy, only good.
Do yourself a favor and watch this. It makes recent Hollywood epics look like kid stuff. The scale of this movie is so enormous, I realized that China is the only country in the world that can mobilize armies of stuntmen large enough to put on a show like this. But it's not just spectacle; much of the movie consist of wonderful performances from the movies main actors. What with the string of failures in western theaters for similar movies (Troy, Alexander, and the Executive Meddling that hurt Kingdom Of Heaven, Red Cliff is a film that defies precedent the world over.