The "Red Cliff" saga, which John Woo has called his dream project, marks the iconic action director's return to his native China, if not necessarily to Hong Kong, where he made his mark.

Woo was the first Asian director to be hired for a mainstream Hollywood film back in the early 1990s, and his subsequent career in Tinseltown has been an unqualified success. Some say that Woo's move to California opened doors for other Hong Kong movie professionals, and this is probably the case when it comes to actors. Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Woo's own muse, Chow Yun-Fat, are all now international stars. However, the directors who followed him to Hollywood haven't been quite as lucky.

This seems particularly ironic in the case of Tsui Hark, whose films are considered superior to Woo's in Hong Kong. Only two of Woo's movies (1986's "A Better Tomorrow" and 1989's "The Killer") were cited in 2005 by the Hong Kong Film Awards among its 100 Best Chinese Motion Pictures, while Tsui rated five. Moreover, Tsui produced Woo's films and was thought of as an equal creative partner in their making before the two had a falling out in 1989, after Tsui rejected Woo's suggestion to make a "prequel" to "A Better Tomorrow."