Richard Gere is well-known for his support of Tibet so you can understand his interest in playing the lead role in Red Corner, a film that confronts the Chinese system of justice and finds it lacking. He plays Jack Moore, a hotshot lawyer disillusioned with his personal life who`s in Beijing to sell violent, sexually provocative films to China via a satellite set-up. After a night spent celebrating a commercial coup, he takes a beautiful young girl back to his hotel...he`s then rudely awakened by the police; the girl has been brutally murdered and Jack has her blood all over him . Chinese justice is amazingly ruthless ... What`s terrific about this film is the performance of Bai Ling as the lawyer appointed to defend Jack. She brings a dignified rationality to her character that is strangely lacking in Gere`s. He stares, he sighs, he looks like Richard Gere ... she creates a character. Director Jon Avnet and screenwriter Robert King don`t quite manage to bridge the incredibility gap in Red Corner although there are some exciting moments in this glossy political thriller and I like the way the issue of human rights is turned back on the United States. And I liked the romance in it. But the resolution of the film is like Chinese justice itself, swift and bewildering.
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