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. Set over a long, dark and increasingly bloody night at a Song Dynasty military fortress, this 12th-century comic mystery opens with a touch of "Macbeth" — a visiting leader is found murdered in his bed, suspicion falls immediately on the guards — before peeling back layer after layer of Agatha Christie-esque puzzle-box intrigue. But Zhang's own authorial touch is unmistakable in the mazelike palace intrigues, the phalanxes of armed soldiers and the ferocious bursts of action, plus the climactic nationalist overtones of a story that pits the will of several individuals against the fate of an empire.
That fate hangs in the balance throughout the movie, which takes place during a detente between the rival Song and Jin dynasties, and which opens in the middle of the night with a whirlwind of violence. The victim is a Jin diplomat who's come to negotiate with the Song prime minister, Qin Hui (Lei Jiayin), and whose demise immediately triggers executions among the soldiers who were tasked with protecting him. One who survives, seemingly through dumb luck, is a comic bumbler named Zhang Da (comedian Shen Teng), who somehow becomes the story's reluctant sleuth: He's ordered to figure out whodunit by dawn, which basically gives him just two hours before he, too, will face the possibility of execution.
"Full River Red," which runs a hefty, not entirely justified 157 minutes, thus plays out in something close to real time. We are with Zhang Da at nearly every moment as he and a stern deputy commander, Sun Jun (Jackson Yee, a growlingly effective foil), question those who were among the last to see the diplomat alive, including a night watchman and a group of female entertainers. Chief among the latter is the evocatively named Zither (Wang Jiayi, very good), a beautiful dancer who turns out to be as formidable a foe as any of the high-ranking officials in the mix, including He Li (Zhang Yi) and Wu Yichun (Yue Yunpeng).
