Red River

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Audience Member This film has the most wonderful vietnam scenery for the first ten minutes.....shame the rest of the movie didn't live up to the greatness it promised. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 01/22/23 Full Review Audience Member A strong Hong Kong presence in this mainland drama, with Nick Cheung sharing the thespian burden both with veteran Danny Lee and former cat III-hottie Loletta Lee. Thematically and visually Red River is strictly sixth generation fare, however, albeit with an extra polish lending a bit of a Hollywood sheen to the rural misery and heartbreak. The efforts to cross over into commercial cinema and perhaps an international audience hardly does the movie any good, though, as it clearly weakens the mild social commentary and the attempts at dealing with recent Chinese history, no doubt the strongest points of Zhang Jiarui's excellent screenplay. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/29/23 Full Review Audience Member Setting all that aside, Red River is also a rather sweet gender-swapped Oedipal love story interrupted by gangsters. The story starts off with a brief prologue set in the Vietnam war era seventies. A little girl, Ah Tao, witnesses her father being blown to bits by a land mine when they're flying a kite together. Big Bummer, that. It then jumps to the nineties with Zhang playing Ah Tao, all grown up but suffering mentally from the trauma. She's working as a cleaner in a massage parlor (in China) owned by her aunt who has a friend, Ah Ha (Cheung), who happens to look a lot like Ah Tao's father. Ah Ha discovers Ah Tao has a marketable singing voice so he's nice to her while trying to make money off her by charging people a couple dollars to Karaoke with her. The aunt also has a wealthy and cruel gangster client who's pissed off because he had a leg blown off in the Vietnam War, and he takes an interest in ah Tao because, since she's mentally challenged, she doesn't know enough to avoid him. Ah Tao's affection is for Ah Ha, because he's nice to her and he doesn't kill people for a living?and the other thing?so she runs off with him. This angers the gangster who chases after them to get her back. Tragedy and trouble ensue. Things end sadly. more: <a href='http://sitenoise-atthemovies.blogspot.com/2010/06/red-river-hong-he-2009-china.html' target='_blank'>sitenoise at the movies: Red River</a> Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/10/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Red River

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