Full River Red (2023) might be the most interesting movie I've seen this year

08 Dec, 2023

A Chinese comedy thriller mystery, I went into this knowing absolutely nothing and was just blown away by what I got. It took me about 5-10 minutes before I realized what I was watching.

It felt like a Chinese Shakespeare-style play. And it's hilarious and devastating at the same time. Everything has intention to it: the stage direction, the transitions, the music that harkens back to old chinese opera.

The movie is about Zhang Da, a guard tasked with finding the culprit that assassinated a foreign delegate. Failure results in his own execution. With a deadline of two hours, he spends most of his time making up lies to save his own butt; only to find that his stories seem to become true the more he utters them...?

An intruiging premise that grows on its own and while I think it doesn't quite stick the landing, it's still a joy to watch unfold. The movie does get to a point where there's too many layers to the mystery, and while it is true to everyone's motivations and there's a hilarity to how complex it is, an exhaustion starts to settles in at the 2 hr mark of this 3 hr runtime.

I'm not that big a fan of comparing things to others since works should stand on their own, but if I had to pull a western comparison out of my hat, I'd say this is similar to Glass Onion--a movie that also plays upon multiple tropes familiar to its target audience. But unlike Glass Onion, Full River Red changes its genres so many times and so brilliantly along its course, from drama to comedy to mystery to a story that aims its arrow straight at the soul of the nation and asks what are you willing to sacrifice for that ideal? And should you even? What is the point?

Going into this movie, I think it's good to be aware that:

1. The movie specifically plays with many Chinese cultural tropes. When one of the high ranking politicians makes a specific noise, I immediately got it and started laughing and my partner just went, "Why are you laughing? And why'd he make that noise?"
2. This isn't a negative. I'd love for you to experience this movie regardless of any confusion you might feel--heck, I think it's a great idea to watch foreign films in general and learn about the drama languages inherent in those cultures. I've been on a French and Indian film watching spree recently and it's incredible the things you learn.
3. There's a massive amount of puns that are violently hilarious in Chinese, but the subtitles are absolute trash. My partner didn't get any of them, and everytime there was a bout of amazing wit in the writing, she just went, "huh?"
4. I mean, even just the regular dialogue has terrible translated subs. There's a part where someone goes, "How dare you?" but it's delivered in a comedic way that's just so Chinese and yet the subs just completely miss out on it! I felt like they could've at least attempted to translate the tone.
5. Another part has a very significant phrase and they just translated it as "Loyalty". (nooo) Loyalty doesn't even cut to the depth of reveal! That phrase means so much more--and sure, I suppose the audience members could pick it up from the context, but I'm thinking about the barrier that non-Chinese watchers have to go through already.
6. Every time the characters have to move from one scene to another, there's an incredible chinese opera music score. The singer is screaming/shouting words that speak directly to the audience about the emotions of the scene, what's at stake, etc. But it's not translated, and they're not in Mandarin either! It's some other dialect and it's a pity that the audience can't at least read the subs because there's so much heart and so much that contributes to the vision of the movie. You do however just get the desperation and the tone from the singer's voice and the violent clashing of instruments in the background.
7. This soundtrack is also a bone of contention. While I had no issues with it, I've read that many felt it shifted the mood far too much because the movie chooses to combine modern music in its regular scenes but suddenly shifts back to Peking opera style music. Certainly, it can be a bit jarring, and while it might feel like the movie has too many breaks, these transitions allow the audience time to absorb the full gravity of what just happened and a time to breathe before the next big revelation.
8. Content warning: mentions and threats of rape in this movie.

Here's the best way I can equip you to enjoy this movie: when it starts, there's a paragraph that sets up the premise.

Pause the movie. And just read it, over and over again until you get it.

It straight up slaps you with a bunch of Chinese names and kingdoms and while I know about the Song Dynasty, you might not, and the character names may take you a while to get. You do need to know them, because the entire movie operates on this premise.

Anyway, here it is screenshotted in case you want to read it for yourself before you start the movie.

You can kind of think of it like:

1. Beloved general Yue Fei was fighting people from the country of Jin. (foreign enemies)
2. A man, Qin Hui, betrayed this beloved general, Yue Fei, and had him executed.
3. 5 years later, Qin Hui (the betrayer) is now a high ranking politician and is meeting an ambassador from Jin (foreign enemies).

And then the movie starts.

You may not like this movie. But I wholeheartedly recommend you to give it a shot. It's so incredibly funny and dramatic and I had such a blast with it. Regardless of my disdain towards the subs, I think it's the most riveting thing I've watched this year.

I haven't seen Godzilla Minus One or The Boy and the Heron though.

I will briefly address the propaganda part of this movie. There's certain themes at play, most notably the idea that "cheap peace is no comfort but a humiliation" (cheap according to who???) and also "our countrymen can't live with their heads held up high unless our country is the strongest and we payback our enemies for all the humiliation they heaped upon us" which is very much a fascist/totalitarian ideal that gets echoed constantly.

Look. I watch American movies all the time. I often roll my eyes at the military industrial complex stuff. I couldn't get through Black Hawk Down because it was just 30-40 minutes of American propaganda before it even started on the drama (tbf, I was watching the Director's Cut version so I assume that has even more propaganda during the setup) and even stuff like Fast and Furious is incredibly silly in the way it portrays things. Sure, people will say, it's Fast and Furious! Nobody takes it seriously! But that's not how propaganda works. You are not immune to it.

Perhaps the ideals rendered in Full River Red are not the best. It's even more worrying given that I am not Chinese and I am conscious and aware of how much that government is eyeing an invasion at my country.

But.

I still enjoyed the movie. Much like how I enjoy American movies. I recognize the problematic parts; the propaganda and the lies spread about Middle Eastern men who instead of being loud and misogynistic are, in my own experience, kind, romantic, and gentle in every aspect of their lives.

You can read the movie in multiple ways. You could even see it as a subversion in its depiction of suffering under this totalitarian society. It's obvious how they want you to read it: a nationalist call for dominance over foreign enemies. But everyone is suffering under that system. All the characters are fighting for their lives, even the villain(s).

No one is happy.

And in that sense, it's a harsh critique leveraged at the government itself. This is, of course, only one part of the movie. There are other things that are unambiguious and problematic in its portrayal.

I would still recommend this movie. I had a great time with it. High strung tension along with a barrel of laughs, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

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