Manjianghong

The plot is told in the form of a double male lead in a fast-moving, ancient idol scripted secret room. I can appreciate the helplessness and hopelessness of the film's producers.

The short video-style comedy starring Shen Teng is the highlight of the film, and Yi Yiming Qianxi supports the vast majority of the main line and growth story, but it is clear that the character he plays is not doing well in the plot, which is the problem of the script, not the actor.

The cast is undoubtedly too strong in China, when scoring it is recommended to give the cast 6 points first, and then reduce the score according to other issues as appropriate.

I can read some of the comments on these reviews - firstly it is not for the person who don't appreciate layers and nuances of crafty human games. Those who like pure action or hong kong type of simpified plots will not appreciate this and will mark it as low score. However I suspect Zhang is painting on this broad canvass multiple themes with the underlying one on the geopolitics around China now, hence the hit in China with the masses there. That call to arms when they feel besieged by outside forces has a resounding clang from the recitation of the poem of the name of this film. The other reason is, China audience has a much deeper appreciation for their history and cultural reference - and these themes found in the movie has resonance with them.

You can see from his earlier works - where symbolism and the tapestry of how he structure his sets are now pared down to very basic backdrop. The pacing and the dialogue and all the twist and turns as he slowly introduce it while you peel the layers of intrigue built into the whole story. It is for the mature audience who has tasted the games in their worklife and being caught between two rocks - you can sympathise with the characters as they try to wit themselve out of the situation which we had experienced before in different guise in our lives - all through the film you try to keep an even keel whether this whole thing was planned or it was adapt as it go on - this is the feeling you develop as you keep watching.

The pacing was excellent, the music designed to be a merge of old and new is supposed to be jarring to create the dissonance between the different scenes and quicken the tension - everyone has an angle and it's like trying to keep an eye on where the ball is in one of the three cups as these are being moved around quickly. As the layers peel more and more, you can identify with the different characters, their motivations and positioning each of them working on - and it's like every single piece of chess is making their own moves on the board within their own confined rules - it is for this reason those who want more depth and layers to their movie watching will appreciate Zhang move to pare down to just basic simple set (not much of sets) and then all the focus is on the characters and the games they all have to play while the sword of death hangs over the two main characters and all those who fall into their orbit.

And at the end of the show - there was an actual final objective - just that there were many ways they had to adapt to finally reach that. And with that Zhang Yimou perform his coda elegantly bringing the symphony to an end. Chapeau Mr Zhang, chapeau !

A rather slow and stagnant film in the first half, it was largely driven by charisma of individual actors. Also not helped by the monotonous setting of the film, which is just grey wall and grey sky throughout. But Full River Red quickly picked up steam as twists after twists and as the suspense grew. The movie has a powerful ending as Yue Fei's poem is recited, for which the film is named after. It is not hard to understand why the film had sub a great box office as it is truly a star studded lineup, but perhaps it is a little surprising that the film is more than what is shown on the surface. It is about struggle and standing up to power and desires while being told in a self deficating way.

What saves this story is the performance of the main cast. All actors play their roles passionately, and they are the only real strenght this movie has. The sets are limited but not holding back the movie.

The story is decently captivating. It starts as a whodunnit, that turns into a case of national security. Various factions are in the game, that don't know who to trust. Overall a gripping story, but it does get more nonsensical as it goes on.

The absolute worst part is the music, especially it's volume. Without exaggeration, the music is 10x as loud as the audio. I spent two hours holding the remote, ready to press mute. The music also fits the scenes it's played in poorly, but that would be forgiven if it was not 10x too loud.

When an ambassador is found stabbed to death, the Prime Minister "Qin Hui" (Jiayin Lei) orders an immediate investigation to be headed by his director "He Li" (Yi Zhang) and his deputy "Wu Yichun" (the quite charismatic Yunpeng Yue). Pretty quickly, this investigation has seen the killing of the Captain of the guard and his replacement by the young "Sun Jun" (Jackson Lee) who has alighted on a potential culprit in "Zhang Da" (Teng Shen). The Prime Minister has given the young man and his prisoner just two hours to get to the bottom of the killing and to retrieve a letter thought to have been contained in an ornate leather purse. For much of the first ninety minutes, this is quite a cleverly interwoven and characterful whodunit. Who to trust, who is behind the plot - what is contained in the letter? Who has read the letter? What might the beautiful courtesans know of the mystery? It's quickly paced and quite entertaining. Sadly, though, the last forty-five minutes rather falls away. The characters all start to trip over themselves and the intrigue stops being that and starts to become a bit of a farce leading to an ending that was really weak and disappointing. It looks great though, the production standards and costumes are professional and colourful - it's just an hour too long - and that's without counting the endless pre-title production credits!