Full River Red is the best Chinese film I have ever seen, though I have seen so few that it is hardly a competition.

What I really liked about this movie is how much the directors for this film cared about the setting, the entire movie is set inside a small army post that has a palace and it's set just two hours before dawn so everything has that blue color to it and it doesn't go away.

What also impressed me is that whenever a state sponsored or popular big budget movie from a country like China or Pakistan comes out, it is usually a blockbuster imitation of action movies or a comedy. Full River Red is neither.

It is a historical fiction murder-mystety drama that is genuinely suspense and funny at times. It has such a small premise but it still looks admirably big budget in pulling it off. The only thing holding Full River Red back is the same thing that didn't help when I was watching the beautifully shot Malaysian film "Bunohan: Return to Murder", namely that their domestic intrigues and politics are strange to us and therefore, most of the snappy dialogue is hard to follow and make use of for the audience to understand the story.

The film is also shot on 60fps I think? I don't know if that is 60fps but I see a lot of blurriness in the picture when someone moves. It's also quite long, it could have been more snappier, I felt like it didn't payoff as well as it build-up.

I would give Full River Red a 6/10, for it's bold premise, beautiful cinematography, great costume design. I would love to see more movies like that from China