Previously called “Love and Let Love”, John Woo’s next film The Crossing will start shooting next month in Beijing…

When James Cameron‘s Titanic is really cooking, I think, it’s when the directoris playing to his strengths. The sequence with Jack hand cuffed to the pipe and Rose needing to get him free is top class stuff. There’s character, suspense, comedy and a little bit of running about. Cameron on top gear.

Some of the film, though, met heaps of criticism, particularly the central love story.

One might expect a similar mix of pedestrian romantic tropes, however well played they might be, and well-practised dynamics in the action and disaster scenes from John Woo‘s next picture, The Crossing.

Or… maybe not, though. Perhaps Woo will trump Cameron and actually nail the love story stuff too. Not sure if that means Cameron will have to hand over his World Crown to Woo in that case.

According to China.Org, The Crossing will start shooting next month. Zhang Ziyi and South Korean actress Song Hye-kyo will be amongst the cast, with several other key roles to still be announced.

The film will be set on aboard the Taipining, a steamer that sank after a collision in 1949. Though it had only been okayed to hold five hundred to six hundred passengers, there were fifteen hundred on board and… I guess it’s a spoiler to tell you what happened, but it wasn’t pretty.

I wonder how much of this will be filmed practically, and what kind of scale the disaster will be on. I’ve seen Woo’s Red Cliff, for example, and know that he can do huge.

And, you know, I’d be prepared to bet you anything that this film ultimately clocks in at an absolute minimum of two and a half hours.

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