At the Imperial Court of the Eastern Han Dynasty in Xuchang in the summer AD 208, during the final days of the Han Dynasty, the shrewd Prime Minster of the Han Empire, Cao Cao demanded the puppet Emperor launch a campaign against the warlords Liu Bei and Sun Quan in southern China, whom he considers rebels against the Han Dynasty and unify all of China Thus began a military campaign of unprecedented scale, led by the Prime Minister himself and his mighty million-man army swiftly conquering the southern lands. At the Battle of Chang Ban, Liu Bei was forced to abandon the city of Xinye and lead his army and 100,000 civilians unwilling to be under Cao Cao's rule on an exodus. Left with no choice, Zhuge Liang, the top military strategist of Liu Bei, was forced to convince and ally with Lord Sun Quan, the leader of the South and thus an unlikely alliance was forged. As Cao Cao prepared for a huge naval invasion of southern China to destroy the kingdoms of Xu and Eastern Wu, Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu, the Military Commander of Sun Quan, devised an indigenous strategy. They formulated a plan to entrap Cao Cao's army, who were moving towards Wu on both land and water. The first battle began with Sun Shangxiang luring Cao Cao's vanguard into a battle formation called the Eight Trigrams Formation (八卦之陣), where they were utterly defeated by the allied forces. Cao Cao learns of the loss, but shows no disappointment, and proceeded to lead his army to camp on the opposite side of the river, directly facing the allied army's camp at Chi Bi. At the same time, the allied forces threw a banquet to celebrate their victory. The movie ends in a cliffhanger to the start of the Battle of Red Cliffs What makes RED CLIFF undoubtedly stand out are the excellent Chinese martial arts fight scenes, commonly known as 'Kung Fu', and an impressive display of Battle Formation... meaning arrangement of soldiers, swordsmen, archers, cavalry men etc, into a complex formation ...