The knives are out, and then some in “Full River Red,” Chinese director Zhang Yimou’s darkly entertaining exercise in twist-twist-stitch. This 12th-century comedy mystery takes place during a long, dark and increasingly bloody night in a Song dynasty military fortress. before being challenged. behind layer upon layer of Agatha Christie-esque puzzle box intrigue. But Zhang’s own writing style is undeniable in the labyrinthine palace intrigues, the phalanxes of armed soldiers and the wild bursts of action, plus the culminating nationalistic undertones of a story where the wills of multiple individuals confront the fate of an empire.
That fate hangs in the balance throughout the film, which takes place during a détente between the rival Song and Jin dynasties and begins with a whirlwind of violence in the dead of night. The victim is a Jin diplomat who has come to negotiate with Song Prime Minister Qin Hui (Lei Jiayin), and whose death prompts immediate executions among the soldiers assigned to protect him. One who apparently survives by sheer luck is a comic gossip named Zhang Da (comedian Shen Teng), who somehow becomes the story’s reluctant detective: he’s tasked with discovering weedunit at dawn, which is in fact is only two hours before he gives too. , threatens the possibility of execution.
“Full River Red”, which lasts no less than, not quite rightly, 157 minutes, takes place almost in real time. We’re with Zhang Da almost every moment as he and a stern second-in-command, Sun Jun (Jackson Yee, a snarling, efficient dagger), interrogate those who were among the last to see the diplomat alive, including a night watchman and a group of female entertainers. Chief among the latter is the suggestively named Zither (Wang Jiayi, very good), a beautiful dancer who proves to be as dangerous an enemy as any of the high-ranking officials in the mix, including He Li (Zhang Yi) and Wu Yichun ( Yue Yunpeng).
Almost all interrogations end badly and bloody; Even by the standards of a classic detective story, Zhang Yimou and Chen Yu’s convoluted screenplay contains a hellish number of corpses. Charges are flung left and right, throats are slashed and pierced, and many consist of a jewel-encrusted retractable dagger. an anachronism? Maybe. (The hints of punk and electronica in Han Hong’s folk soundtrack are an even bolder departure from the stark authenticity of the era.) But if so, that’s not the only genius in a tale of hidden identities, secret marriages, incriminating documents and unexpected weapons and countless cunning reversals.
The director’s fans are sometimes reminded of his 2002 beautiful and elaborate martial arts drama Hero, in which his characters were also transformed into living chess pieces to challenge the Imperial forces. However, the similarities are more thematic and structural than stylistic. Unlike “Hero” with its tingling color accents, “Full River Red” appears as immaculately put together as all of Zhang’s work, but seems rather functional and inelegant. Due to the movie’s eventful ending as day breaks, the cinematography (by Zhao Xiaoding) bathes everyone in a dull, shadowy blue offset only by the occasional streak of red. (At times it leans towards the monochromatic intensity of “Shadow,” a stylish pinnacle of the director’s recent filmography.)
The monotony is not purely visual. Despite a touch of violence and a touch of humor – thanks in large part to Teng’s Zhang Da, whose often foolish, impulsive behavior acts as a diversion – the film deliberately creates a kind of claustrophobia, a sense of imprisonment. That’s fair enough; You’re supposed to feel the noose around each character’s neck tightening, though the tension wears off at times and the story threatens to collapse under the weight of the many twists and turns. The rhythm is modulated by occasional energetic cutscenes of the characters running from one part of the fortress to the next, sometimes filmed from above, allowing us to imagine them moving through a physical and psychological labyrinth.
What lies at the heart of the labyrinth is best left unexplicitly revealed here, though it could explain why the movie was a box office flop (it grossed over $600 million domestically) and Zhang’s biggest commercial success career became. “Full River Red” is the title of a famous poem – a lamentation and war cry (“There we remain on barbarian flesh”) believed to have been written by Song dynasty general Yue Fei – which almost everyone in China know it should know it by heart. It adds more than a hint of jingoism to this otherwise funny, mechanistic parlor trick, building a surge of emotion that can make your heart sink or soar.
Source: LA Times