“Only The River Flows” reminded me of David Fincher’s “Zodiac” in the way it provides both the thrill of a police procedural while denying us the catharsis of a resolution.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 25, 2024

Wei is not going to tell us, but he invites us to think that the answer to our question may lie neither in probable history nor in fantasy but in absurdist philosophy or certain modes of detective fiction.

| Oct 7, 2024

The pre-cellphone, pre-internet setting is a satisfying time capsule back to an era when on-screen detectives worked on hunches and their wits. In this enigmatic tale, they may not be enough.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 11, 2024

Only the River Flows is a compelling film moulded in the stylish trappings of classic noirs, but its lacking screenplay tells a frustratingly empty story.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 3, 2024

Beautifully shot with a grainy 1990s celluloid vibe, with an evocative classical score, the story is told by director-cowriter Wei Shujun with inventive flourishes and remarkably vivid emotionality.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 27, 2024

It was really atmospheric, melancholic, and visually arresting...

| Aug 20, 2024

Offbeat flashes of humour punctuate this stylishly enigmatic, Jean-Pierre Melville-inspired crime picture, but the momentum flags a little in a convoluted final act.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 19, 2024

It’s an often surreal, disquieting film, beautifully shot in shadow and rain, and with an unwavering, historically accurate commitment to cigarette smoking (almost nonstop, and even in between mouthfuls of noodles).

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 16, 2024

Bong Joon Ho’s later Memories of Murder is an obvious comparison point, for its similar mix of incomplete mysteries and probing of institutional mechanisms. But Wei maintains a highly individual, slippery and fascinating artistic sensibility all his own.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 16, 2024

A jigsaw puzzle, dream sequences and continuous snatches of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata build towards an uneasy denouement that will leave the viewer guessing and obsessing long after the final credits roll.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 16, 2024

A murky neo-noir with an impenetrable plot and a mischievous sense of humour, Only the River Flows doesn’t always make it easy for us. But it’s a fascinating film, and Zhu Yilong is tremendous as a frazzled police captain on the verge of madness.

| Aug 15, 2024

Fittingly, as pure cinema, Only The River Flows is a knockout: eerie and dreamlike. An overture of kids at play is a marvel. Another scene is a dead ringer for gaudy maestro Brian De Palma. And, oh: it never stops raining.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 15, 2024

An intriguing and well-made diversion, a puzzle whose missing pieces make a disquieting pattern.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 13, 2024

Set in provincial China, it’s a film so attuned to film noir heritage that director Shujun Wei opts to set part of it in an old cinema - a sly tribute, perhaps, to the murky crime stories of old he’s trying to evoke.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 13, 2024

A combination of police procedural with film noir, shot with flair and imagination... Yet there’s another aspect, a psychological undercurrent, which becomes stronger as the film progresses and, slowly and determinedly, throws the film off course.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 12, 2024

Wei Shujun’s murder mystery “Only the River Flows” upends the familiar investigation plot, for his Chief of the Criminal Police Ma Zhe will follow one frustrating lead after another.

| Aug 7, 2024

No matter that the plot development is deliberately murky, it’s the mood that catches you in its tides.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 2, 2024

The film’s plot becomes a little muddy at times, exacerbated by a runtime that frankly could have used some reduction to make for leaner pacing.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 1, 2024

This crafty police procedural from next-generation Chinese filmmaker Shujun Wei leverages the technological limits of the 1990s to advance its gripping story.

| Original Score: A | Jul 31, 2024

Only the River Flows enriches what could have been a run-of-the-mill neo-noir with pitch-black humor and a disregard for linear narrative and concrete resolution.

| Jul 31, 2024