Full River Red (2023)
Chinese historical drama about the murder of a foreign emissary at the court of prime minister Quin Huy during the Song dynasty. In case you're wondering, that would place it somewhere around the 12th century.
It's a rather good movie, until it isn't. Zhang Yimou, probably mainland China's primary director of big historical epics, sets up a paranoid little microcosm of intrigue and opportunism around the court of sickly prime minister Quin Huy and seeing all of that play out for a while is a very engaging experience. The murder of a foreign diplomat raises all manners of questions and a military officer and his deadbeat nephew are given the mission to investigate it, stirring a vipers nest of competing conspiracies, some of which they might be involved in, in some capacity.
There is an attempt at shakespearean grandeur to the whole thing, framing the petty bickering and backstabbing of the wealthy and powerful as a struggle for the very soul of the nation itself. And for a while it works quite well, its twisty, tense machinery of competing agendas keeping you guessing as to where it's all going. But around two thirds through it starts to run out of steam and then it keeps going. Boy, does it ever keep going. On face value, there is the problem of pacing. It starts of very tight and comes looser and looser as it keeps going, getting itself lost in unnecessary redundancies and relying more and more on characters arbitrarily making poor decisions so that the plot can move along.
On a more fundamental level, and do feel free to accuse me of missing valuable cultural context, the plot lost me completely once it was established what the main characters' goal actually was. Central to the climax of the movie is a poem, and a character being forced to recite it. And not being educated in Chinese history I can't say I have any idea why this poem is supposed to be such a big deal. I mean, I'm sure it's some foundational part of the chinese national identity or something, but to me the climax of this movie felt extremely arbitrary.
It's not that Full River Red isn't an interesting movie. I like a historical play with hundreds of extras in armor and horses and large sets as much as the next guy. I was fascinated with its idiosyncratic musical choices ( the soundtrack to this movie must be heard to be believed. I couldn't possibly convey some of the musical choices to you.). The bad guy had a pair of ninja geisha bodyguards, which was kinda sick. But the movie as a whole didn't stick the landing for me at all. The final act was built on what I presume are certain patriotic sentiments that I not only don't share, I don't even have any context for them.
There was a good bit of interesting stuff in Full River Red, in regards to conflicting loyalties and higher principles and I would be remiss not to point out than Shen Teng and Jackson Yee did a fantastic job playing the two point of view characters to the byzantine palace intrigue we get to follow. But the payoff to that whole intrigue, after subversions of subversions have been subverted and every twist has been twisted around itself at least twice, just felt really hollow and drawn out. I give Full River Red credit where credit is due but I did not walk away from it feeling like I had a very good time.
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