Full River Red

With a twist-packed plot to match its labyrinthine location, Zhang’s fast-paced film motors along nicely as an engaging “Knives Out”-style whodunnit before stumbling a little in the protracted final act.

A few snappy comedy routines and a perpetually escalating mystery plot ensure that Zhang’s latest never slows down nor retraces its steps long enough to feel monotonous.

The knives are out and then some in “Full River Red,” a murkily entertaining exercise in twist-twist-stab-stab from the Chinese director Zhang Yimou.

The lighthearted tone poking through keeps it afloat, and suspends the viewer in mostly carefree entertainment for its two-and-a-half-hour running time.

Zhang Yimou keeps you guessing with a convoluted period murder mystery. Full River Red blends dark humor, suspense, and Machiavellian deceptions in a labyrinthine whodunit. There's enough backstabbing here to warrant an extra order of knives.

A surprisingly funny and witty dark comedy, but ultimately overlong, exhausting and convoluted.

The numbers aren’t wrong: the most successful film of 2023 to date, and the most successful film of Zhang Yimou’s career, is also one of the best films the director has ever made.

So, for every person who finds the [comedic] tone helps make this mystery feel breezier than you expect, there's bound to be another who cannot separate [its] surface distraction from an otherwise highly convoluted tapestry of convenient twists and turns.

A visually ravishing blend of palace intrigue and knockabout humour.

Its blend of styles and sensibilities may be occasionally confounding, but Full River Red is certainly never less than entertaining in its richly inventive mining of history.