Whodunits couldn’t just stay in the US forever. India created a fun one with Andhadhun in 2018, a devilish dark twist on the genre. Now Yimou Zhang and China throw their hats into the ring, going for the period piece whodunit with Full River Red. The double homework Zhang did on Chinese history and whodunit moviemaking pays off and then some, as the movie has you guessing, scene to scene, moment by moment until the end.
Full River Red takes place right after leader Yue Fei’s death in 1146. An ambassador from the rival Jin dynasty ends up murdered in the residence of the Song family’s grand chancellor Qui Hui (Lei Jiayin). Desperate to not start a war, Hui enlists Sun Jun (Jackson Yee), the deputy commander of the guard battalion, to investigate the murder. Sun Jun starts with the unranked soldier guarding the dead ambassador, Zhang Da (Shen Teng), as well as the female dancing troupe for the ambassador, including head dancer Zither (Wang Jiayi). Sun Jun’s investigation is watched over closely by the two right hand men of the chancellor, He Li (Zhang Yi) and Wu Yichun (Yue Yunpeng), who don’t want any shenanigans upsetting their current spot in the power structure.
Full River Red is overflowing with political machinations akin to Game of Thrones like power grabs from all sorts of characters. As such, it would be easy for Yimou Zhang to craft something absorbed with self-importance and a dour, drab tone. Zhang’s characters certainly act that way, but the script, bravely, does not. Following more like the plot of The Death of Stalin, all of these power hungry social climbers sense their time to strike is now, and make all sorts of moves to curry favor with the grand chancellor. Watching these men or women flash a “silver” or “gold” badge as their status symbol while the others seethe on the sidelines is sneakily funny every time. And as all these people get closer to the top, they start sounding like Vizzini in the Princess Bride, WAY overthinking the scenario they’re in, missing the correct answer along the way. The end result of most scenes is a fade away of power positions to see what happens to people under extreme stress, finding humor in a powerful person begging for mercy as they overplay their hands. The lighter tone keeps Full River Red from overplaying its hand, saving the real heavy stuff for later in the movie when the story demands it.
I have always been impressed with Yimou Zhang, director. He’s always had a knack for style and interesting shots; that’s still true in Full River Red, with cameras following troops as they navigate the castle maze. But this particular film shows the real talents of Yimou Zhang, screenwriter. Zhang’s first magic trick is keeping that audience laughing along with his characters and their strange machinations. But the joy of watching Full River Red is the dense, complex layers to each of our characters. That complexity manifests in an onion peel of a plot, as new pieces of information come to light, painting each character with a new shade or in a different light. The revelations and character development continually feed one another, until by the end, each character has moments where they look silly and defeated, but maybe that’s on purpose? Because there’s one or two more subplots going on in the background, essentially making each character smarter than meets the eye. And when the movie starts flirting with scenes like this, Zhang has a scene immediately after to reel things back in, you know, tighten it up. You can feel government/studio persuasion in the third act, but by that point, Zhang has won the audience over and given us a fresh spin on how to execute a great whodunit.
I don’t recall a jokey war adjacent murder mystery before. So props for Yimou Zhang inventing a new subgenre in the whodunit world. I wanna see more innovation with movie murder mysteries! Where else can we go? Zombie murder mystery? Time travel murder mystery? I have no idea, but I’m excited for anything and everything!