I enjoyed it. Maybe the guy couldn't understand the movie. It's a fiction that took great liberty with "history", but I don't think it tries to pretend it's historically accurate. 苑舉正 made a commentary on the movie. He was very complimentary. He concludes that cultural soft power is useless without military hard power. (Song emperor was kidnapped by the Jin because it was militarily weak despite Song, according to 苑, being at the height of Chinese culture. The movie doesn't directly talk about this though.)
I saw it last week. It was the final day on show here. I was apprehensive about watching movies in cinemas after covid but there was only less than 10 people in that movie session. I’m a Chinese history fan, so I couldn’t resist.
My take. It was entertaining and I enjoyed it. The historical setting was pretty accurate, although the events depicted were fictional obviously so I don't know why people expected this to be a historical documentary lol.
I thought the script, the pacing, the acting of the cast overall was excellent. Particularly impressed with Jackson Yee. I am normally biased against boy band actors but he surprised me. Great acting.
I was also pleasantly surprised by some of the comedy elements in the first half of movie. Even wtith the presence of comedy actors in it, I was expecting a more serious show. And the opera music whenever the main characters moved around was abit jarring to me.
This is the probably the most enjoyable zhang yimou movie I watched. “To Live” is a better and more highly rated movie by him but can't say I enjoyed watching it. Dun understand the negative reviews and criticism, or people claiming the movie white washing Qin Hui. I disagree with that. Having said that I can see why people will be disappointed if they expected a movie centred around Yue Fei and his military exploits. This is more a murder mystery with political intrigue set in historical times. Nevertheless it was well made. Coincidentally I watched another murder mystery show recently, murder mystery 2 on netflix. And that was complete rubbish compared to full river red.
I definitely recommend full river red. My only regret is not avoiding spoilers on douyin as I procrastinated whether to watch the movie or not. So I was not surprised when the twist at the end appeared. The high point of the show when the army recited the poem is still super awesome though.
